Main Points:

* Fusion can provide clean (emission free) energy and help create a new high-tech industry.

* Private companies are investing in novel fusion experiments

* U.S. is moving fusion from an energy to a science initiative, with no plans to get into engineering of it or build a engineering test reactor. With current funding levels U.S. will become a support program for other countries to build demos, and not a world leader in fusion.

On Tuesday, Andrew Holland, ASP’s Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate Change, Michael Delage, V.P. of Strategy and Corporate Development at General Fusion, and Steve Dean, President of Fusion Power Associates convened to talk about the future of fusion energy. Starting the conversation, Holland said “when we talk about next generation energy, an important part of that is fusion… it is literally the power of the stars.” Holland went on to explain the basic principles of fusion. He explained that although the domestic fusion program was founded in the 1950’s, the U.S isn’t producing fusion energy yet. First, it is very diffic’re not making investments, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world isn’t.”  ASP recently published a fusion white paper laying out a ten-year vision for the field. It calls for a fusion commissioner to increase political will and pressure to advance the field. The U.S. must pursue multiple and parallel research paths and actively collaborate with businesses and industry. He asked, “Can we plan for something that is beyond any president’s time in office, beyond political terms? We need to think about this in long term.”

Michael Delage from General Fusion opened by refuting the statement that fusion energy “has been 20 years away since 50 years ago.” Looking at progress in terms of metrics, fusion energy has grown as fast as Moore’s Law. The difference between 1970’s fusion and today’s fusion is like the difference between a smart phone and the first calculator 30, 40 years ago. He then talked about the two big kinds of fusion research, Magnetic Fusion and Laser Fusion (Inertial Confinement Fusion). The difference in plasma density between the two approaches is 10 trillion. There is a large opportunity for fusion at intermediate density levels. National laboratories have a few experiments, including the Z-machine, but there is something interesting going on in private companies. Citing an article in Science, he read

Traditionally, fusion energy research has meant huge efforts like the $20 billion multinational ITER project and $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility. But that may be changing. In unassuming industrial units across North America, Europe, and elsewhere, small teams of scientists and engineers supported partly or entirely by private finance are working out novel approaches to fusion. Their goal: to design financially viable power reactors simpler and cheaper than the government-funded behemoths and to build them faster. Some of the new technologies look bizarre, but venture capitalists are convinced that each holds at least a slim chance of an enormous payoff.

Delage then explained the fusion experiment being built at