For over seventy years, scientists have been pursuing nuclear fusion technology, drawn by the promise of abundant, clean energy. The United States was an early leader in this field, investing heavily in fusion research since the 1950s. In contrast, China entered the race much later but has made remarkable progress in recent years.
According to industry data from Nikkei, China now holds more fusion patents than any other country. The Chinese government is investing approximately $1.5 billion annually in fusion research, nearly double the U.S. investment of $800 million, as noted by Jean Paul Allain, head of the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. “What’s more important than the number is how quickly they’re achieving these results,” Allain told CNN.
A concerning development is that a small, relatively unknown Chinese startup, Energy Singularity, has accomplished something that the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an international project funded by seven countries since 2006, has not yet achieved. The Shanghai-based company has successfully completed the engineering feasibility verification for high-temperature superconducting technology in its Honghuang 70 (HH70) tokamak device. This achievement gives China a significant lead in the crucial area of high-temperature superconducting magnetic confinement fusion. Energy Singularity is also the first commercial entity to construct and operate a fully superconducting tokamak.
Yang Zhao, CEO of Energy Singularity, stated, “The design of the device began in March 2022, and we completed the installation by the end of February this year, setting a global record for the rapid development of superconducting tokamak devices.”
The question arises: how did this relatively obscure Chinese company achieve in two years what ITER has struggled to accomplish over nearly two decades? Yang explains that using high-temperature superconducting materials allows the device’s size to be reduced to about 2% of traditional low-temperature superconducting systems. This innovation cuts the construction time from approximately 30 years to just 3 to 4 years.
Yang also emphasized that the HH70 device is built with over 96% domestically sourced components and that all its magnetic systems utilize high-temperature superconducting materials. Despite their successes, Energy Singularity is not slowing down. The company plans to develop a new tokamak device called HH170, aiming for a deuterium-tritium equivalent energy gain (Q) greater than 10 by 2027. In fusion research, the Q value measures energy efficiency, indicating the ratio of energy produced by the reactor to the energy input needed to sustain the fusion reaction. A Q value above 1 means the reactor generates more energy than it consumes, a goal that has eluded researchers for decades. The highest Q value achieved to date is only 1.53.
Investment and Competition
To date, Energy Singularity has secured around $112 million in private investment. In contrast, the ITER project has exceeded €20 billion (approximately $21.8 billion) in costs, far surpassing its initial budget of €5 billion and running nearly a decade behind schedule.
Energy Singularity is not the only startup focusing on compact fusion reactors. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, based in Deven, Massachusetts, is collaborating with MIT to develop a small fusion reactor called Sparc. This reactor will be approximately 1/65th the size of the ITER reactor and is expected to produce around 100 megawatts of heat energy in bursts lasting about 10 seconds—sufficient to power a small city.
Small reactors are gaining traction not only in nuclear fusion but also in nuclear fission. The Biden administration has actively supported Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which have been making significant strides in this sector.
Three years ago, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Centrus Energy Corp.’s request to produce High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) at its enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio. This milestone made Centrus the first company outside Russia in the western world to obtain such approval. Currently, HALEU is primarily used for research reactors and medical isotope production. However, it will be essential for over half of the SMRs being developed globally, with TENEX, a subsidiary of Rosatom, being the only current supplier of HALEU.
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