The race to master thermonuclear energy between the US and China

Energy Singularity, a small startup based in Shanghai, is trying to harness fusion energy. While American companies and industry experts worry that the country is losing its lead in the race to master that virtually limitless form of clean energy, a new crop of companies like Energy Singularity are popping up across China, according to CNN.

Fusion, the process that powers the sun and other stars, is difficult to replicate on Earth. Several companies have developed fusion reactions, but sustaining them long enough for practical use remains a challenge. The advantage of fusion power is its enormous efficiency. Controlled fusion releases four million times more energy than burning coal, oil, or natural gas, and four times more than fission, the most common form of nuclear energy used today. Researchers can’t develop it fast enough to combat climate change, but it holds promise as a solution to future warming.

The Chinese government is pouring an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year into developing fusion energy, according to Jean Paul Allain, head of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Science Office. By comparison, the Biden administration is spending about $800 million a year.

Private companies in both countries are optimistic that they could bring fusion power to the grid by the mid-2030s, despite the enormous technical challenge. The United States was among the first countries to research fusion, in the early 1950s. China explored fusion power later that decade. They have recently picked up the pace. Since 2015, China has filed more fusion-related patents than any other country, according to industry data compiled by Nikkei.

Shanghai-based startup Energy Singularity is just one example of China’s breakneck pace of development. The company built its own tokamak reactor within three years of its founding, faster than any other similar reactor ever built. A tokamak is a highly complex cylindrical or doughnut-shaped machine that heats hydrogen to extreme temperatures, creating a plasma that can drive fusion reactions.

For a young company working in one of the world’s most challenging areas of physics, Energy Singularity has reason to be confident. It has received more than $112 million in private funding, and its current tokamak is the only one using an advanced magnet in its plasma experiments. Called high-temperature superconducting magnets, they are stronger than the copper magnets used in older tokamaks. According to a scientist working on similar technology at MIT, this type of magnet allows the smaller tokamak to produce as much fusion energy as a larger one, and can better confine the plasma.

Energy Singularity plans to build a second-generation tokamak to demonstrate its method is commercially viable by 2027, and hopes a third-generation device could be supplying power to the grid by 2035. By contrast, tokamaks in the United States are aging, according to Andrew Holland, executive director of the Fusion Industries Association in Washington, DC. As a result, the United States relies on machines from allies in Japan, Europe, and the United Kingdom to advance its research.

Holland pointed to a new $570 million fusion research park under construction in eastern China called CRAFT, which is due to be completed next year. “We don’t have anything like that,” he said. “The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has been upgrading its tokamak for 10 years. The only other tokamak operating in the U.S., the DIII-D, is 30 years old. There are no modern fusion facilities at the U.S. national laboratories.”

Fusion is a complex process that involves the fusion of two nuclei that normally repel each other. One way to do this is to heat the tokamak to 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times the temperature of the Sun’s core. When the nuclei fuse, they release a lot of energy in the form of heat, which can be used to turn turbines and generate electricity. Sustaining a fusion reaction for long periods of time is even more difficult. While China is leading the way with tokamak reactors, the United States is pioneering another technology: lasers.

In late 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California fired nearly 200 lasers at a cylindrical container containing a fuel pellet the size of a peppercorn. It was the world’s first successful experiment to achieve a fusion energy surplus, meaning more energy was produced from the process than was used to heat the fuel.

“We don’t know exactly what the best design is,” says Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist and executive director of Fusion Energy Insights, a fusion energy watchdog. “There are probably several viable approaches to fusion power, considering costs and other factors in the long term. But the tokamak is the most studied design over time and the most advanced in terms of physics. There are a number of private companies working on it.”

With the money China is pouring into research, tokamak designs are evolving rapidly. The EAST tokamak in Hefei was able to maintain a stable plasma at 70 million degrees Celsius, five times hotter than the core of the Sun, for more than 17 minutes, setting a world record. Mikhail Maslov, an official at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, described it as a major milestone towards the commercialization of fusion energy.

While the Chinese government is pouring money into fusion, the United States is attracting more private investment. Globally, the private sector has invested $7 billion in fusion over the past three to four years, about 80 percent of which has come from U.S. companies. But if the Chinese government continues to invest more than $1 billion a year, it could soon surpass the United States, even in the private sector.