The U.S. needs a national fusion strategy before our lead in energy slips away

From the article

We are in the middle of a long-term geopolitical race: China, Europe and the U.K. have been pouring billions into fusion development. If the U.S. wants fusion energy to power our economy in the next decades and beyond, now is the time to double down.

For more than 75 years, humans have sought to harness the power of fusion — the energy source for the sun and all other stars in the universe. Yet it’s only in the last few years that U.S. researchers at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have achieved the holy grail of ignition, when controlled fusion reactions can produce more energy than that supplied. This discovery, along with the development of high-temperature super conducting magnets, has led to a surge in private investments, with fusion start-ups raising four times more capital ($7.1 billion) in the last four years than ever raised before, according to [data from the Fusion Industry Assn](https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/over-2-5-billion-invested-in-fusion-industry-in-past-year/).

U.S. fusion companies and national laboratories have led the funding and have made the most scientific progress to date. It now feels as though the U.S. is closer than ever to commercialization due to breakthroughs like superconducting magnets, high-powered lasers, efficient pulsed power machines and the use of AI in materials and plasma physics.

But isolated breakthroughs alone won’t win the global race. Strategy will. The question now is whether the U.S. will use this moment to build and fund a coherent national plan for fusion energy or watch other nations reap the economic and strategic rewards of a technology American scientists did so much to advance over the last few decades.