German government: world’s first fusion power plant to be built in Germany – The Federal Cabinet wants to put Germany on the path to a fusion power plant. By 2029, over 2 billion euros are to be invested in relevant research.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/German-government-world-s-first-fusion-power-plant-to-be-built-in-Germany-10699501.html
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From the article
“Germany on the way to becoming a fusion power plant” is the name of an action plan adopted by the German government on Wednesday. It aims to make Germany a leading global centre for fusion energy. With a total budget of over 2 billion Euro in this legislative period alone, research, infrastructure and an industrial ecosystem centred around fusion for power generation are to be promoted. To date, the annual public funding for fusion research from the responsible ministry has totalled around 150 million euros.
With this initiative, “we are paving the way for the world’s first fusion power plant in Germany”, said Research and Technology Minister Dorothee Bär (CSU) confidently. “The last few years have clearly shown us all that our energy supply is facing challenges.” It is the basis for competitiveness, value creation and sovereignty. The key technology of fusion could help to make the energy of tomorrow “safe, environmentally friendly, climate-friendly and affordable for everyone”.
According to [the action plan](https://www.bmftr.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/2025/aktionsplan-fusion.pdf?__blob=publicationFile), the government sees nuclear fusion as an important, long-term building block for clean, safe and base-load-capable electricity production. The envisaged first demonstration fusion power plant is to be built by an industrially led consortium of German companies to strengthen Germany’s technical sovereignty and establish the country as an energy producer and export nation in the fusion sector.
Maybe we should invest in Star-Trek-transporter-technology as well …
Not that I wouldn’t be more than happy if (not when) fusion finally works commercially, but I hear the “in the next 5 years” for some decades now.
CSU will do ANYTHING but to invest in renewables … maybe at least this time something good for humanity comes from it….
How are they going to build a fusion power plant when continuous fusion hasn’t been achieved yet.
Europe is too over regulated to be the first mover in this type of thing. It’ll be held up by red tape for years.
Pretty certain China is going to beat everyone by many years.
Should’ve just kept the nuclear reactors up and running for a couple of more years instead of experimenting with unproven technology.
Oh man, it’s really a religion.
As if the god of progress or its prophet will come and give us plentiful energy forever with enough innovation (the prophet will come with enough prayer).
What a major shitshow this is.
Permaculture and lowtechs in your area/village/commune/territory is the way forward, people, regardless of your beliefs. We need resilience for a world that’s going to be it with increasingly grave perturbation (ecologic, economic, war on resources). Some of them will become not “events” but “permanent changes”.
Good luck _\\//
I’m so worried about the people in charge jumping the gun with tech these days. Yes new tech should be researched and funded but so much of this stuff just isn’t ready yet and might never be.
When actually exists I’ll be more excited but this just feels like a grift.
Im sure gonna believe the country whose ex chancellor is a Russian gas company executive
Wendelstein gotta hurry up and make a tiny sun already.
Pretty sure China already has a fusion reactor OR will have it before Germany.
Germany and all the EU needs energy that doesn’t depend on buying fossil fuels from Russia or USA. This is good scientific research and I’m glad they’re investing on it, it has potential, but alongside and more important right now is for them to invest in actual fission-based nuclear plants to make energy, they screwed themselves when they shut down the plants they had, they need to upgrade and revive those, invest in new ones and invest in renewables. Hopefully no one actually making decisions for Germany is betting only in fusion or they will lose.
“Germany on the way to becoming a fusion power plant” has the same vibe as Germany is on the way to becoming a beer garden.
The problem with fusion is that it is an extremely asymmetric risk. If we could achieve a continuousl running net-positive large scale reactor, then suddenly there will be significantly higher interest in improving them. The hope is that energy rapidly becomes way cheaper and will be a leap in moving away from fossil fuels, to a point where it could put an end to global warming.
However, research is expensive, and you are by no means guaranteed to see any success. You could also invest the 2bn into 1000-2000 MW of proven-technology Wind Turbines.
From 70’s it wasn’t a single year not to read at least 1 scientific article who promoted that in max 10 y will benefit electricity from fusion reaction, 50 years later reality is wind mills and hot water from the sun
2 Billion combined with the german bureaucracy apparatus gets you a small model of a Fusion Power Plant