Startup begins work on US fusion power plant
In another sign of fusion energy development’s quickening pace, Helion Energy, a startup with $1 billion in private funding, announced Wednesday it has commenced construction of its first planned power production reactor
The Washington state-based company said the site work keeps it on track to deliver electricity within three years to Microsoft under a 2023 purchase agreement, and “one step closer” to realizing the vision behind its unique fusion energy technology, said David Kirtley, Helion co-founder and CEO, in a statement.
Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa, noting that “the path to commercial fusion is still unfolding,” said the company was proud to support Helion’s pioneering development.
Helion is one of three developers to amass $1 billion in investments, according to the 2025 annual report by the Fusion Industry Association. The company is aiming to build the first U.S. power plant to harness fusion energy for the grid at a site in Malaga, Washington, which is roughly halfway between Seattle and Spokane.
Helion hasn’t disclosed the full cost of the project and still needs to obtain permits from Washington state, according to the company. The plant is expected to produce at least 50 megawatts of power.
FIA reported that global investment in fusion pioneers — now numbering more than 50 worldwide — has surpassed $9.7 billion, with $2.6 billion raised just last year.
“That’s not just a five-fold increase” in as many years, “it’s a sign of maturing investor confidence [and] technological progress,” the FIA report said.
Association CEO Andrew Holland said Helion has staked a unique engineering path to achieving commercial fusion power.
Replicating the energy generation of stars, the most common fusion reactor approaches seek to use temperatures of 100 million degrees Fahrenheit or more to fuse isotopes of hydrogen together within enormously powerful magnetic fields. A second strategy is ignition fusion achieved by striking tiny fuel pellets with ultra high-energy laser beams, as demonstrated by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2022.
Helion aims to use superheated fuel to produce fast-pulsed reactions that rhythmically change the surrounding magnetic field, directly generating electricity. The approach, if mastered, would eliminate the need to contain and convert fusion heat into much lower temperatures in order to power turbines, as required in more common strategies, said University of California, San Diego, professor Mike Campbell.
Helion completed construction of its Polaris reactor prototype at the end of 2024, and hopes to demonstrate electricity from fusion from that reactor as soon as this year, said Helion’s director of communications, Jessie Barton.
The next iteration will be the Orion reactor that is under construction along the Columbia River in Washington state. It plans to deliver power into the Pacific Northwest grid at its location.
“They have done nice work. They have good people,” Campbell said. “I wish them well, but I’ll be happily surprised if they are able to do it by then,” he added, referring to the goal of power delivery to the grid in 2028.
Shon Hiatt, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s business school, said in an email it is “very exciting” to see companies developing fusion technology.
“The caveat, though, is that they are still decades away … from being able to economically scale and produce the same amount of power as a conventional nuclear or natural gas plant at a reasonable competitive price without government support,” Hiatt said.
Brian Wirth, a professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said he was similarly skeptical of the ambitious timeline, as it is unclear that Helion has consistently demonstrated greater energy output than input — long a barrier for fusion.
FIA reports that 35 of 45 fusion companies surveyed in its annual report hope to be operating a commercially viable pilot plant between 2030 and 2035, with others circling dates either before or after that.
The group commented that fusion energy development is moving beyond the laboratory into a serious race to be among the first with a commercially valid technology, which industry experts say explains part of the private investor support from very high-wealth individuals and funds.
There will be winners and losers, FIA predicted. “It is implausible that every company will successfully make it at scale. Furthermore, companies can consolidate efforts; some of the development and deployment costs can be shared through partnerships and joint ventures,” FIA said.
Holland said that while government and other public sector support for fusion projects is increasing worldwide, the amount of money is dwarfed by the private sector.
The Department of Energy under former President Biden chose eight fusion developers to receive multiyear DOE grants based on their successful completion of a series of technology milestones on their way to commercialization.
The program was late getting underway because of negotiations between DOE and the companies over access to proprietary science behind the fusion technologies, according to industry officials.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been a vocal supporter of fusion, but Holland said the Trump administration has not yet demonstrated full commitment to fusion power.
President Trump’s executive orders have focused on small modular reactors that split atoms, not fuse them, in its drive for future power sources for the artificial intelligence boom it seeks.
“The [Trump] budget request is low” for fusion, Holland said, but so were requests for other energy technologies. “At this point, it’s uncertain. The secretary of Energy has said nice things about fusion indicating he’s focused on it.”
Sometime soon, the industry needs him to deliver, Holland added.
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Editor’s note: while this project is on the face of it good news, the reailty is fusion power stations are still a long way off. The second-generation test reactor following the successful British JET project; ITER, currently under construction in southern France, will hopefully be able to maintain reactions for some minutes at a time, but it will require at least one, probably two, further machines, each twice the size of its predecessor, before we can prove, or disprove, we can recreate the temperatures and pressures that exist in the centre of stars, and maintain reactions for days and months. This is going to be vastly expensive, and will take decades. ITER itself is not expected to be operating until around 2033.
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Herb Rose
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Light [s the transmission of energy. Energy decreases with distance from its source. The speed of light can never be constant. meaning all of Einstein’s theories based on relativity. including fusion. are nonsense.
It would be nice to see Micrsoft and Gates go bankrupt with this stupidity.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
“The speed of light can never be constant.” Where is your reference of this?
Have a good day
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Andy Rowlands
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Fusion is nonsense at all, that is what powers stars, and given the right funding, we will one day have fusion power plants.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Andy,
Suns are powered by energy converting neutrons into hydrogen atoms. We see the action in beta decay and anytime gamma radiation is given off. Why is fusion never seen occurring? The amount of funding needed is infinite and the results will never be achieved.
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Anapat
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ITER relies heavily on russian technology. In spite of the Ukraine war, Russia delivered to the West. Astonishing!
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Andy Rowlands
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The original idea for the Tokamak reactor was Russian, and their idea was tried out in the British JET project, and found to be successful, but I see scant evidence ITER is ‘relying heavily’ on Russian technology.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Editor,
Where is my comment
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Editor, Herb and other PSI Readers,
First, thank you PSI Editor for posting my previous comment.
To date, every nuclear fusion bomb has required the explosive power of a nuclear fission bomb to initiate the nuclear fusion process. Given the PSI Editor’s note it seems this explains the low level of the Government’s interest in converting the energy of nuclear fusion into electrical energy.
Have a good day You All
Reply
Moffin
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My fundamental questions are;
What ignites the initial fusion of stars.
Is it a result of tremendous pressure from tremendous mass and tremendous gravity of these masses, therefore unable to be duplicated on earth?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Moffin,
If stars were ignited by pressure then there would be a uniform size where ignition would occur. Once ignition occurred there would be no additional mass added to the sun as the sun would expel matter in the solar winds A pressure induced ignition would mean no giant stars and so no black holes.
The whole theory of stars, like the rest of todays physics, is a fantasy defying both observed evidence and reason.
Herb
Reply