Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

Now is the time for Congress to double down on support for fusion energy development. Our nation is at a pivotal moment in the development of fusion energy as a clean, reliable source of power that could effectively address the climate crisis. Fusion will enable our clean energy future and help end our overreliance on geographically limited, globally traded, environmentally detrimental, and ultimately finite commodities to meet our growing energy demands. 

The need to significantly improve support for our US fusion research enterprise is one of the major reasons that I first ran for Congress in 1994. It is also one of the primary reasons that I decided to seek the position of ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology after Chairwoman Johnson retired last year. This support is now strongly bipartisan, and it is also bicameral.  

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has played a leading role in building support for and shaping our national policy surrounding fusion energy development, especially over the last several years.  

Substantial direction for the modern fusion energy program was provided in the bipartisan Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act of 2018 and significantly expanded upon in the bipartisan Energy Actof 2020. More recently, additional guidance for and extensions of current authorizations were provided in the landmark CHIPS and Science Act, which the president signed into law in August 2022.  

I am excited about the significant technical progress we’ve seen in fusion over the last two years alone. For example, in the summer of 2021, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), in partnership with MIT, demonstrated breakthrough achievements relevant to the development of fusion energy. 

On August 8, 2021, the NIF achieved a fusion energy release of 1.3 megajoules from 1.9 megajoules of incident laser energy on a target of fusion fuel.[1] As summarized by the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E): 

“While the NIF result equals the decades-old record tokamak scientific energy gain of approximately 0.7, it represents a worldwide first for any laboratory fusion experiment in achieving an even higher degree of fusion self-heating, putting it solidly into a regime that fusion scientists call a ‘burning plasma.’” [2] 

The achievement of a burning plasma is a critical step for the development and operation of any viable fusion energy system.  

ARPA-E also summarized CFS’s achievement[3] as follows:  

“On September 5, 2021, CFS and their partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a successful test of their 20-tesla toroidal-field model coil, demonstrating that their magnet can actually be constructed from cutting-edge, high-temperature superconductors (HTS). Such a magnet enables tokamaks that are significantly smaller, lower cost, and faster to build than ones based on conventional low-temperature superconductors, such as ITER.  

Based on the 60-plus years of research on tokamak physics and its high level of scientific maturity, CFS is confident that if and when SPARC — their tokamak based on this magnet design — is built, it will achieve a scientific energy gain between 2 and 10, quite possibly within this decade. This would constitute the next major scientific milestone for the tokamak that is expected to accelerate and unleash further engineering efforts toward a pilot-scale fusion demonstration.”[4]                                                                          

More recently, on December 5, 2022, the NIF achieved fusion ignition by releasing a yield of 3.15 megajoules from 2.05 megajoules of incident laser energy on a target of fusion fuel (a scientific energy gain of over 1.5).[5] This is the first-ever demonstration of net gain in a fusion energy experiment, and this development is particularly relevant to confirming the potential promise of inertial fusion energy concepts. This result was repeated, and likely exceeded, in July 2023, with additional details currently undergoing peer review.[6] 

I am encouraged by the rapid growth we are now seeing in the private sector for fusion and the major technical achievements that they are now bringing to our overall national effort. There are currently over 20 fusion energy companies based in the United States. This is about two-thirds of all such companies globally, which have raised over $5 billion in total private investment to date.  

The president’s budget request for 2024 recognizes this progress: The budget request includes over $1 billion for the DOE’s fusion energy research program, a 32% increase. This bolstered support for fusion is extremely encouraging as we look toward a future where fusion is a key, zero-emission energy source. Within the topline level, the budget request also proposes to substantially increase support for materials and fusion nuclear science R&D and the DOE’s recently established milestone-based public-private partnership program, which are both aimed at significantly accelerating the commercialization of fusion energy systems. The overall level and substance of the budget request are largely consistent with the priorities identified in the most recent long-range plan developed by the DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC), as well as the legislative guidance provided by Congress over the last five years.  

This request is not perfect. It still does not include any specific funds to establish an alternative fusion energy concepts program as authorized by statute since 2018. We must strive to address this critical gap. But, taken as a whole, this proposal for fusion is a vast improvement over any previous budget request that I can recall in my time in Congress. 

All that said, there is still far more work to do. Congress has built a solid legislative framework that would ensure that the United States is the world leader in this potentially transformational emerging industry through the bipartisan authorization laws mentioned above. And this administration is now clearly ready to follow through on this direction. But if we don’t translate this sizeable leap in support into actual appropriated funds this year, then our nation will have missed a major opportunity at this pivotal moment. Given the growing global competition that we’re now seeing in the race for commercial fusion, we would deeply regret not aggressively pursuing this opportunity.  

Unfortunately, neither the House’s nor the Senate’s appropriations guidance for fusion for fiscal year 2024 is currently consistent with the levels and priorities identified in the president’s budget request, the FESAC's long-range plan, or the guidance provided in the CHIPS and Science Act and in the related laws that it amends. Simply put, the currently proposed House and Senate appropriations numbers won’t get the job done. But there is still a long way to go before a final budget gets to the president’s desk, and this is not the time to give up. 

As stated so clearly in the long-range plan, “Now is the time to move aggressively toward the deployment of fusion energy.” Or to put it another way: If not now, then when?  

Notes

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/science/lasers-fusion-power-watts-earth.html  

[2] https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-media/blog-posts/nifty-and-sparcly-recent-achievements-fusion  

[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/can-nuclear-fusion-put-the-brakes-on-climate-change  

[4] https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-media/blog-posts/nifty-and-sparcly-recent-achievements-fusion  

[5] https://www.llnl.gov/news/national-ignition-facility-achieves-fusion-ignition  

[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/08/06/nuclear-fusion-net-energy-gain-higher-yield/ 

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this perspective are those of the author and not necessarily of the author’s organizations, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). This perspective is intended to help inform and stimulate discussion. It is not a report of the NAE or the National Academies. 

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