Three Seattle-area fusion companies served on a panel together to discuss the path to commercial power last week at the Technology Alliance Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase event. Fusion, which powers the sun and the stars, requires super hot, super high-pressure conditions sustained over time. The goal for the companies is to engineer a technology that generates and captures more energy from smashing atoms together than is needed to produce the reactions — a target known as “Q greater than 1.”
Helion Energy has set the most aggressive timeline for reaching commercial energy production, aiming to build and operate a facility by 2028. The Zap Energy representative predicts that we’ll see small scale but not necessarily profitable fusion later this decade and into the next. The company is experimenting with its FuZE-Q fusion device and has not set a date for commercialization. For Avalanche Energy the question comes down to economics, rather than a race to achieve Q greater than 1 first. Avalanche is aiming to achieve this goal within the next two years.
While the debate over timing and targets will be settled in coming years, the three panelists agreed that the most important thing is someone cracks the fusion challenge and unlocks this potentially vast source of clean energy.
The race in Seattle isn’t the only race to fusion- it’s also pitting superpowers against each other- and American tech leaders worry China could surge ahead. While the U.S. spent approximately $800 million a year on fusion efforts during the Biden administration, the Trump administration has taken action supporting nuclear fission, which powers today’s nuclear reactors, but has not shown the same interest in fusion and the sector has had to become increasingly reliant on venture capital to fund its progress. It’s reported that China is investing more than twice the $800 million a year the U.S. was investing and is also focused on training fusion physicists and engineers.
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