WHEN WILL FUSION BE COMMERCIALIZED?

Let me give the answer now.  "Experts" speculate that fusion could be commercialized around 2050.  For those totally new to this blog site and energy in general, there are two kinds of nuclear energy, fission and fusion.  Fission occurs when heavy elements such as uranium and plutonium split into lighter elements (left), where part of the mass is converted into energy.  Fusion combines hydrogen, or its isotopes, deuterium and tritium, into something heavier, plus energy (right).

Fusion is cleaner and safer than fission, with a virtually unlimited supply of fuel (millions of years).  While our Sun and all the stars use fusion to produce energy, humanity has only exploded the Hydrogen Bomb (Atomic Bomb uses fission) and is trying to develop pathways toward controlled fusion, primarily through two mechanisms:  Tokamak (donut-shaped concept initiated in Russia), using something called magnetic confinement, as is being constructed at Cadareche in France, and a laser,  being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in a process of inertial confinement.  

A rough rule of thumb is that an atomic bomb is a thousand times more powerful than any conventional weapon, while a hydrogen bomb is a thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb.  The atomic bomb over Hiroshima is to the above left, while the Soviet Union's Tsar (hydrogen) Bomba, the largest ever detonated, is to the right.

History of fusion power:

• Around 1920 Great Britain suggested the concept.
• In 1939 German/American Hans Bethe (right) dabbled in how the Sun produces energy, and was awarded a Nobel Prize.
• In 1946 the United Kingdom patented a fusion reactor.
• Hydrogen bombs were the focus of development in the 50's, but the Soviet Union talked about the tokamak approach, Princeton University initiated a few fusion reactor experiments, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory began a program.

• The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was formed in the early 50's, and Edward Teller (in the middle with Ernest Lawrence to the left and Herbert York to the right), one of the founders, in 1954 set the tone for a second pathway:  lasers.
• In 1962, when I graduated from Stanford, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggested laser fusion, only two years after the invention of the laser.

• General Electric showed a fusion demonstration (right) at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.
• The Soviet Union in 1968 constructed the first tokamak.
• In 1974, a real company, KMS in Michigan, achieved the first laser induced fusion in a deuterium-tritium pellet.
• In 1977 the 20 beam Shiva laser at Livermore became the first megalaser.  I spent time at this laboratory under (way under) Teller working on this effort.

• Lasers got an uptick in funding during the 80's to scare the Soviet Union.  Some of my colleagues at Livermore suggested Brilliant Pebbles, which became President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.  While the concept using lasers was mostly nonsense, I do give them credit for helping bankrupt the Soviet Union, leading a few years later to the end of the Cold War.

• In the middle 80's Livermore's NOVA made some progress, while the University of Rochester used frequency tripling to cut the wavelength, a concept I tried to accomplish when I was doing my PhD work on tunable lasers 15 years earlier.
• Around this time, the first tokamak was constructed in Cadareche, France, which lead to ITER (to be discussed later).

• In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced their bombshell cold fusion development.  Within a year I was able to hire a cold fusion researcher into the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute.  The field never became viable and Bor Yann Liaw is now a battery/fuel cell expert in an office next to mine on the University of Hawaii campus.

• In 1997, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor was announced as the world tokamak experiment  in Cadareche, France.
• The National Ignition Facility at Livermore has missed targets, but in 2013 did successfully initiate reaction that released more energy than absorbed, but was not net positive when the entire system was considered.  While I hold hopes for the future, the present is a period of introspection.

• There has been an assortment of deviations and variations, including:
• bubble fusion, which has generally been discredited
• Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works (black or high security defense work) built a high beta fusion reactor last year, and hopes to have operational in 2022.  This system shows promise for space exploration.
• I just communicated with Charles Helsley, president of Fusion Power Corporation, who indicated that funding was close at hand for their Heavy Ion Fusion concept.

As fusion is occurring in every star, surely, it should be a matter of time when controlled fusion is attained on Planet Earth.  The Hydrogen Bomb was step one.  Step two will be net positive.  Yet, can humanity actually commercialize fusion?  We should know around 2050, unless one of those non-conventional visions can surprise.  I still think laser fusion is the most likely pathway, but dream now and then about the reality of cold fusion.

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Ritz-Carlton Luminara: Day 13--The History of Fusion

Our ship docked in Halong Bay, and I've had a lot of 

recent coverage because of our Diamond Princess cruise through this area, so I will today focus on Fusion, the greatest hope for sustainable energy into the long-term future,  Today, only a history.

There are two kinds of nuclear reactions.

• Fission:  splitting a heavy nuclei, like Uranium.  An Atomic Bomb gets energy from fission.
• Fusion:  joining light nuclei, like, like isotopes of Hydrogen, Deuterium and Tritium.  A Hydrogen Bomb uses fusion.

Some fusion history.

• In 1920, British physicist Francis Aston discovered that the mass of four hydrogen atoms is greater than the mass of one helium atom, which implied that energy can be released by combing hydrogen atoms to form helium.
• This concept provided the first hint of how stars produced energy.

• 
  Henry Russell observed that a star's heat came from a hot core rather than the entire star.
• Mark Oliphant, working with Ernest Rutherford and others, produced fusion by using the nuclei of Helium-3 and Tritium.
• In 1938, Arthur Ruhlig observed deuterium-tritium fusion.  D-T fusion will be the path to initial man-made commercial fusion because it requires the lowest temperatures and pressures.

• 
  Hans Bethe in 1939 investigated a form of fusion in the Sun's core that in 1967 won him a Nobel Peace Prize in Physics.
• The first fusion reactor patent was registered in 1946 by George Paget and Moses Paget for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
• 
  In 1950-51, the Soviet Union team of Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov first discussed a tokomak-like approach.  This is the donut or torus fusion reactor.

• 
  In 1951, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam at the Los Alamos National Laboratory(LANL) developed a design for a multi-megaton yield fusion bomb.  They ended up having a major feud,
• No one really knows much about Ricard Garwin, who Teller assigned to design the H-Bomb.

• 
  The first Hydrogen Bomb exploded was the 1952's Ivy Mike (10.4 megaton--Little Boy, the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb, had a yield of only 0.015 MT), exploded on Enewetak in the Pacific Ocean, about 3000 miles away from Hawaii.  

• 
  Here is a photo of a 1.4 megaton hydrogen bomb explosion Starfish Prime coming from  Johnson Island, as seen from Waikiki Beach, Hawai at 11PM local time, 900 miles away.  As this bomb was detonated 250 miles above the atoll, the resultant flash was so intense, that it lit up the night sky in Hawaii just like sunset.  Severe damage was caused to several communications systems.   Watch this interim documentary. Here is a personal reaction:

We stood in the ghastly green and yellow glow, unlike any sunlight I’d ever seen. Over the next 40 minutes, the sky’s color changed from yellow to red and then a deep blood red that lingered, which seemed appropriate. Then the sky turned icy blue, then indigo, and then it was night again. It remains the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. 

• In 1954 came Castle Bravo at Bikini Atoll, the first practical H-bomb.  In this weapon, a fission explosion initiated the fusion reaction.

• 
  It was AEC chair Lewis Strauss, in Project Sherwood, who in 1954 foresaw electricity as "too cheap to meter."
• The first controlled thermonuclear fusion experiment was Scylla I at LANL in 1958.  Concept was abandoned because calculations showed it could not be scaled-up for reactor fusion.

• 
  John Nuckolls in 1960 published the concept of inertial confinement fusion, using a laser.
• In 1961 the Soviet Union tested their 50 megaton Tsar Bomba, the most powerful H-bomb ever.  Scarily, they purposefully scaled back what could have been 100 megatons for fear of unacceptable radioactive fallout.

• 
  The Soviet Union in 1968 attained considerable success with their tokamak concept.
• In the 70s, Princeton built a tokamak, and attained similar results.
• In 1972, John Nuckols' idea led to the building at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) of a laser-fusion reactor.

• 
  LLNL constructed a 20-beam Shiva mega laser for $25 million, covering a size approaching that of a football field.
• In the mid-70s and 1979 I worked at LLNL on laser fusion.  My PhD in 1972 was one where I built a tunable laser before one could be purchased.
• In 1998, the T15 tokamak was completed by the Soviets.

• 
  The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) coalition was proposed in 1985 by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to President Ronald Reagan, and formed in 2007, involving Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union and U.S.

• 
  Cold Fusion was publicly announced by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah in 1989.  I'll later review where this field is today, and where it could be headed into the future.
• Various privately backed fusion companies launched in the early 2000s.  Among those involved were Jeff Bezos (General Fusion) and Paul Allen (Tri Alpha Energy).
• General Fusion and Tri Alpha Eergy operated their systems in the 2014-2017 period.
• 
  In 2021, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recorded a record-breaking 1/3 megajoules of energy created from laser fusion, and in December 2022 ACHIEVED THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC BREAKEVEN CONTROLLED FUSION EXPERIMENT.

Here is an October 2025 article on six global tends.  Finally, I asked Google AI what was the current state of fusion.

Nuclear fusion

 is in a "decisive new phase," marked by massive global investment (>$10B private), major scientific milestones like achieving net energy gain (2022), growing public-private partnerships (ITER, SPARC), and rapidly accelerating timelines, with many startups aiming for commercial power by the 2030s or 2040s, shifting from pure research to practical energy solutions. Key trends include record plasma durations, new facilities (IFMIF-DONES), and a global race, especially between the US and China, to build the first grid-connected reactor. 

So on to our 13th day on the Ritz-Carlton Luminara in Halong Port lunch was again at Mistral.

Hamburger, truffle fries, frozen margarita and beer.

Ended with dessert and cappuccino,

Then on to my final and best tasting session at The Living Room Bar.  Today, 12 gins and 3 ports.  Started with these three gins

Next three.

Third three

Fourth three

At this point, it was difficult to pick the best.  However, I then proceeded to eat some White Truffle Chips, and a surprise.  Perhaps the result could have been different if I had steak or cheese or something else.

#1 was Plymouth Gin, from Plymouth, England.  It has been made since 1973 using a unique recipe of botanicals and Dartmoor water.  Known for its softer, less juniper profile. Typically costs $50/bottle.

That bottom glass has all the leftover gin over rocks.  Then, Tomas, from Portugal comes to supervise over the bar, and proceeds to provide a lesson in Port wines.  For example, I did not know there was a white port.  So we tasted the regular dark one, a tawny port and a white port.

Took a long nap and struggled to get to Azur for dinner.  Had a wedge salad and linguini Agli Olio, with an Itallean red wine.

Dessert was fancy.  Mandarin and another called Wasa something or another.  Sweet, nothing to with the orange or wasabi.

Finally, to The Living Room with the Luminara Band.  A few songs, plus a special ending.  Passengers were asked to wear white.

Then, the finalé was a robust performance of Sweet Caroline.  Maybe the all-white, perhaps being the final song of the night, and really for the entire cruise.  But this was electric.  The one most memorable moment for me of the entire trip.  This you got to watch this to the end.

Walked 1794 steps.

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VISION: THE VALUE OF TRAVEL--SETI and Fusion

In the mid-70s, I enjoyed the life of a typical university professor.  Sorry, but most people aren't provided our benefits.  For example, we have the summer off to dabble in whatever we want.  I chose to extend my wildest imagination and picked the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Fusion as two challenges.

I applied for and was accepted into a NASA Ames Research Center two-month program dealing with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which I earlier this month already detailed.  The science of what I proposed 45 years ago remains ignored.  NASA continues to stick to the diminution of light when a planet now and then traverses across a star, or tracks wobbles of a star influenced by possible planets circling it.  Both seem embarrassingly unsophisticated compared to the measurement of laser frequencies emitted by extrasolar planets, thus also providing the atmospheric composition too, that Charles Townes and I proposed.

However, it does not matter anymore, for the reason why I was at Ames in 1974 was that the space society was still wondering if our solar system was unique in the Universe.  More than 4000 exoplanets have now been confirmed, so that question has long been answered.  But as is the wont of science, we continue to spend large sums trying to find more.

However, the larger question of intelligent life out there somewhere remains intriguing and worthy of considerable vision, for, what if the equivalent of an Encyclopedia Galactica, first suggested by Isaac Asimov, is streaming in from a civilization a billion years older than ours?  The cure for cancer, the solution for world peace...and more.

All we need to do is build a system that can intercept these signals and interpret that message, as in Contact, the film featuring Jodie Foster, with Matthew McConaughey.

Just maybe my greatest contribution to the future of humanity might have been sparked by my presence at Ames that summer when I first met Carl Sagan (who wrote Contact), and later helped him gain the initial funding for SETI when I worked in the U.S. Senate.  To affect the generations to come, you don't need to actually do it.  Just be part of the effort.

The second endeavor had to do with the ultimate energy option.  If our Sun and the stars produce energy through the fusion of hydrogen, why can't we also do this on Planet Earth?

Using Deuterium and Tritium, two isotopes of Hydrogen, all we need to do is attain temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees, while creating magnetic fields 10,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, and confine the plasma to perpetually circulate within a ring-shaped vessel.

Called Tokamak (magnetic confinement), as is being attempted by ITER in France, I long ago gave up on that process because of these extreme conditions.  Add the materials problems, and...forget it.  A soft plan for  deuterium-tritium operation is 2035, which probably means some time around 2050.  However, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the cost will be $65 billion just on construction alone.  Operational cost?  Who knows.

As my PhD involved building a tunable laser before one could be purchased, I leaned in the direction of laser fusion as the better option.  A few layers below Edward Teller, I spent two summers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory assigned to their efforts with inertial confinement.

In 1973, at the time of the Watergate hearing dealing with President Richard Nixon, Pearl and I lived in an apartment bordering Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California.  Wente is the oldest continuously operating, family-owned winery in the USA.  One of my colleagues at the lab was a scion of Concannon Vineyard, located next to Wente, the American winery that gave us Petite Sirah.  This wine was mostly used to blend with other wines.  However, in his garage we tasted what might have been the first bottle of mostly Petite Sirah.  As at that point in my wine-drinking evolution I was into Lambrusco and Blue Nun, I thought the PS was abominable.

Well, Petite Sirah could well be THE red wine of California today.  The inky, high tannin and teeth-staining fluid has been tamed to cost the most, especially when grown in Paso Robles.  I passed through this dusty village coming and going from Oxnard to Stanford several times/year, and never once stopped for even a rest.  The campus was 175 miles away from this town (now up to a population of 32,000).  That's because wineries did not come until two decades after I graduated, but, today, this is the most desirable spot in America for red wines.

Well, on to laser fusion, my most memorable experience at Livermore lab was that once I somehow walked into the wrong lecture, where Teller was informing the limited audience on how to build a better hydrogen bomb.  While I had Q-clearance, this was definitely not where I was supposed to be.  I wondered if it was better to walk out early and avoid being investigated, or hang in there and sneak out.  I chose the latter, and nothing happened.

Back to laser fusion, after my second stint, I decided that this option was two generations away, and the laser for commercialization had not yet been invented.  Today, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility last year set a new record, firing 2.15 megajoules of energy to its target chamber.  But net positive has yet to be attained.

When will this option go commercial?  Well, here is a paper that hints at this.  Two pals, Charles Helseley and Robert Burke have formed Fusion Power Corporation, and while I try to surf the Blue Revolution, they have focused on heavy-ion inertial confinement.  Bob is in the middle, Chuck to the right and his brother Hal to the left.

There has been some progress:

Is fusion power really attracting private-sector interest?  Forbes has suggested that Energy Leaders Need to Pay More Attention to Fusion in 2019.  China has built a fusion reactor that in November of last year became the first to reach 100 million degrees Celsius, which is seven times hotter than the Sun's core.

But what is the true timeline?

I won't even attempt to explain the above graph.  However, it is always safe to predict that commercial fusion is half a century away.  And, oh, I'm still hoping for cold fusion.

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