Opinion · Editorial
Publish the tritium ledger before the timetable
Developers using deuterium–tritium fuel should disclose the assumptions that connect startup inventory, breeding, processing, losses and deployment scale.
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Reporting, analysis, explainers and editorials from across the fusion field.
Technology · The hidden machine
The robot in the vessel is part of the power plant
Components inside a fusion machine will be difficult or unsafe to service by hand. Maintenance architecture therefore sets availability, component design and plant economics.
Policy · Rules of the race
America’s fusion regulatory lead is real. It is not finished.
The proposed U.S. framework is technology-inclusive and risk-informed. Its value will depend on implementation, applicant discipline and rules that survive first contact with commercial-scale machines.
Science · Tomorrow’s machine
A pilot plant must retire six risks to earn its name
A credible pilot must connect confinement to materials, fuel, maintenance, heat conversion and repeatable operation. The weakest interface can define the whole machine.
Industry · Market debut
Fusion has a stock ticker. The commercial watts will take longer.
General Fusion began Nasdaq trading with about $150m in reported cash. The money can finance experiments and disclosure. A power plant remains a much larger undertaking.
Policy · The daily brief
DOE’s fusion roadmap is a procurement list in disguise
The new federal roadmap is most useful when read not as a promise of power by a date, but as a specification for the facilities, components and evidence America must buy.
Policy · The commercial race
Which country will win fusion’s commercial race?
America is favourite to build the first credible commercial-style pilot. China is better placed to build the second, tenth and fiftieth plants. The latter is the race that matters.
Analysis · The Platform View
The reactor is only the beginning
Fusion will be won or lost by the industrial platform surrounding the machine: materials, drivers, magnets, diagnostics, fuel, manufacturing, regulation and talent.
Science · Milestone, Explained
Ignition changed the burden of proof. Engineering must now change the calendar.
NIF established a historic physics result. The next question is how target gain becomes repeatable, efficient and useful at plant scale.
Science · The Bottleneck
The materials problem is the strategy
The first wall, blanket and high-heat-flux components are not supporting details. They set the possible lifetime of a fusion plant.
Industry · Industry
The fusion supply chain is already a market
Commercial value is forming in magnets, lasers, pulsed power, diagnostics and manufacturing before the first grid-scale plant.
Policy · Editorial
Technology neutrality is not indecision
Fusion policy should choose safety, evidence and speed while leaving reactor architecture to technical competition.
Policy · Policy Watch
The Bay Area can become fusion’s connective tissue
A rare concentration of universities, national laboratories, capital and industry can function as infrastructure for the whole field.
Analysis · Systems accounting
A device is not a plant. A plant is not a fleet.
Fusion schedules become legible only when each claim is located on the full path from plasma experiment to repeatable infrastructure.
Field Guide · Reality Check
The tritium ledger every D–T concept must close
Fuel abundance is not fuel-cycle readiness. Breeding, extraction, inventory and losses form one integrated constraint.
Technology · AI × fusion
AI belongs inside the fusion loop
The most important applications connect experiment design, diagnostics, control, maintenance and plant learning.