January 7, 2024 - The new year is expected to bring major progress toward the commercialization of fusion-based power plants by, or even before, 2030, with one company saying it will begin producing electricity by mid-2024.

Fusion energy offers the prospect of creating an effectively unlimited source of zero-carbon baseload power derived from the same thermonuclear reaction that powers the sun. And it can do it without many of the drawbacks of conventional fissile-fueled nuclear reactors that require layers of safety protocols while producing highly radioactive waste.

The Washington-based company Helion, considered a frontrunner in the race to develop a cost-effective commercial fusion power plant, said it plans to be the first fusion energy company in the world to produce electricity from its prototype Polaris reactor in 2024.

This means the company is poised to demonstrate that it can generate a sustained, net-energy fusion reaction, where the energy it generates would be greater than the energy it took to create the reaction. This is the goal of any would-be fusion energy developer.

Helion said it is ready to meet that goal while simultaneously demonstrating that it can produce electricity for the grid, an achievement that no other company has been able to reach.

This aggressive target managed to attract the capital investment community in 2021, resulting in the company raising $500 million to achieve the "net-electricity" target, with commitments for an additional $1.7 billion once Helion attains certain key performance targets.

Notably, the funding round was led by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that created the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot. Altman served as Helion's executive chairman.

Getting on the grid

Helion said the capital is being used to complete the construction of its Polaris seventh-generation fusion generator to demonstrate net electricity production.

The company is "on track to have Polaris built by mid-2024," Helion Founder and CEO David Kirtley told The Energy Daily in a recent interview. "As soon as assembly is completed, we will start operations."

If successful, Helion would be the first organization to generate electricity from fusion, using its unique pulsed non-ignition fusion technology perfected across six generations of test reactor prototypes.

Kirtley said earlier that its sixth prototype demonstrated that the company could reach "this pivotal milestone" in 2024 and show the world that it "can count on fusion to be the zero-carbon energy source that we desperately need."

Helion touts its pulsed non-ignition technology as capable of generating low-cost, 24/7 baseload power to replace incumbent sources of electricity.

Attracting investment

The power sector transition to lower carbon power resources is driving the investment in private sector companies like Helion, according to an S&P Global Commodity Insights report on the billions of investment dollars being directed at fusion.

Given that the global demand for power is forecast to more than double by 2050, the need for a low-cost form of clean baseload power to complement renewables is fueling the spending, the report said. Fusion power plants, along with hydrogen and energy storage, would be used to backup intermittent resources like wind and solar that are not baseload, the analysis found.

"Until recently, the timeline for nuclear fusion's development was too far in the future to warrant even early-stage thinking about how power markets should adapt," the report said. "But nuclear researchers have remained confident that fusion energy will eventually become a viable, long-term energy source — although most still see a long road ahead despite recent breakthroughs."

Nevertheless, private capital is expected to continue flowing toward these private-sector projects, despite a commercial fusion reactor remaining many years away, the report said.

Indeed, "recent promising scientific breakthroughs and burgeoning investor interest in the technology should keep early-stage funding flowing," the report added.

Industry competition

Helion signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft to supply its campus and datacenters in Washington with baseload power beginning in 2028. Kirtley said the PPA marked a real commitment to supply electricity, with significant monetary penalties if Helion does not meet its obligation.

But other companies are right behind Helion with similar low-cost fusion designs that they say are on track to be commercial in a few years.

Commonwealth Fusion, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology start-up that gained attention during the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, is also pursuing aggressive targets to commercialize its fusion reactor design.

US climate envoy John Kerry toured its facility ahead of the UN climate meeting. Later, Kerry announced a five-pronged initiative to support the private sector effort being led by companies like Helion and Commonwealth, even suggesting that the existing international government-based fusion programs be modified to accommodate these private sector efforts.

Commonwealth has targeted 2025 for its SPARC demonstration reactor to achieve "commercially relevant net energy from fusion," the company said. Its first commercial ARC fusion power plant is slated to be deployed by the early 2030s.

The company has already garnered nearly $2 billion in private investment capital to meet those goals, with a White House memo noting that private investment in fusion has reached $6 billion to date.

Meanwhile, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff are plugging away at developing first-ever rules for regulating the new thermonuclear devices under the agency's Part 30 framework covering nuclear byproducts. Because fusion power is considered less harmful in terms of radioactive releases and waste than fission power plants, fusion companies gained a major victory last year in persuading staff to regulate their fusion devices under the less-stringent byproduct rules.

The new regulations are expected to be taken up by the commission in September.