(Oct 25 – Nov 1) This week brought a convergence of technical breakthroughs, unprecedented computational resources, and high-level international policy coordination that collectively advance fusion’s path toward commercial deployment. From world-first plasma control achievements to massive AI infrastructure investments and G7 ministerial commitments, the week demonstrates fusion’s rapid maturation across multiple critical dimensions.
Breakthrough Plasma Control Technologies
UK Achieves World-First ELM Suppression in Spherical Tokamak
The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) achieved a landmark breakthrough on October 24 with the world’s first successful suppression of Edge Localised Modes (ELMs) in a spherical tokamak using three-dimensional magnetic fields. [UKAEA Press Release] [World Nuclear News]
Operating on the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade at Culham Science Centre, researchers successfully deployed Resonant Magnetic Perturbation (RMP) coils to stabilize dangerous plasma instabilities that have long posed challenges for fusion reactor designs. ELMs are sudden bursts of energy and particles expelled from the plasma edge that can damage reactor walls, reduce plasma performance, and threaten the longevity of fusion devices.
This represents the first time RMP coils—which apply small, precisely targeted perturbations to the magnetic field—have successfully controlled ELMs in a spherical tokamak configuration. While RMP technology has been demonstrated in conventional tokamaks, spherical tokamaks present unique challenges due to their tighter aspect ratio and different magnetic geometry.
The achievement carries profound implications for UKAEA’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) program, which aims to build a prototype fusion power plant by the early 2040s capable of delivering net electricity to the grid. Dr. Andrew Kirk, MAST Upgrade’s senior research fellow, emphasized the significance: “This is a major step toward making fusion a reality. ELM control is essential for any future fusion power plant, and demonstrating it on MAST Upgrade validates the spherical tokamak approach for STEP.”
The MAST Upgrade facility, which resumed operations in 2023 after a major upgrade, is specifically designed to address key challenges for compact spherical tokamaks, including plasma exhaust handling, materials resilience, and advanced control systems. The successful ELM suppression demonstrates that spherical tokamaks—which offer potential advantages in compactness and efficiency compared to conventional designs—can achieve the plasma control sophistication necessary for commercial deployment.
Japan’s Helical Fusion Demonstrates Uninsulated HTS Coil Performance
Japanese stellarator startup Helical Fusion announced successful completion of the world’s first performance test of an uninsulated high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil under fusion-relevant conditions on October 29. [American Nuclear Society] The company achieved stable 40 kiloampere current at 7 tesla magnetic field strength while operating at 15 Kelvin (-258°C).
This technical milestone validates a critical design choice for Helical Fusion’s approach to compact stellarator development. Uninsulated HTS coils offer potential advantages in manufacturing simplicity, quench protection, and operational flexibility, though they present challenges in current distribution and thermal management. By demonstrating stable high-current operation under fusion-relevant magnetic fields and cryogenic temperatures, Helical Fusion has validated the feasibility of this approach for their planned devices.
The successful test enables Helical Fusion to proceed with construction of Helix HARUKA, their integrated demonstration helical-axis stellarator, which will serve as a technology proving ground for the company’s commercial pilot plant, Helix Kanata, targeted for deployment in the 2030s. Stellarators, which use complex three-dimensional magnetic field geometries to confine plasma without requiring the large currents driven through the plasma itself (as in tokamaks), offer potential advantages in steady-state operation and plasma stability.
Helical Fusion, which spun out from Japan’s National Institute for Fusion Science in 2021, has raised approximately ¥5.2 billion in capital and recently secured an additional ¥2 billion (~$13 million USD) through Japan’s SBIR Phase 3 program. The company’s progress reflects growing Japanese government support for domestic fusion development, particularly under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has championed fusion as a strategic national priority alongside AI, semiconductors, and biotechnology.
Unprecedented AI Infrastructure Investment for Scientific Discovery
DOE, NVIDIA, and Oracle Announce Largest AI Supercomputers for Fusion Research
On October 28, the U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oracle announced a landmark public-private partnership to build two massive AI supercomputers—Solstice and Equinox—specifically designed to accelerate scientific discovery including fusion energy research. [DOE Press Release] [NVIDIA Newsroom] [HPCwire]
The Solstice system will feature a record-breaking 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, making it the largest AI supercomputer in the DOE’s laboratory complex. The smaller Equinox system will incorporate 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and is expected to be operational in the first half of 2026. Both systems will be housed at Argonne National Laboratory, interconnected by NVIDIA networking, and will deliver a combined 2,200 exaflops of AI performance.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright emphasized the strategic importance: “Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer. The two Argonne systems and the collaboration between the Department of Energy, NVIDIA, and Oracle represent a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships. These systems will be a powerhouse for scientific and technological innovation.”
For fusion research specifically, these systems will enable researchers to develop and train frontier AI models for plasma control, disruption prediction and mitigation, materials optimization, and reactor design. The computational capabilities will support the development of “agentic scientists”—AI systems capable of autonomous hypothesis generation, experimental design, and data analysis—that could dramatically accelerate the fusion development timeline.
The systems will seamlessly connect to DOE’s vast network of scientific instruments and experimental facilities, including fusion devices like the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, enabling real-time AI-enhanced control and diagnostics. This integration of massive computational resources with experimental facilities represents a new paradigm in fusion research, where AI models trained on simulations can be validated and refined against experimental data in near-real-time.
As part of the partnership, Oracle will immediately provide DOE researchers with access to AI computing resources using a combination of NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures, ensuring that scientists can begin leveraging advanced AI capabilities while the larger Equinox and Solstice systems are under construction.
Argonne director Paul Kearns highlighted the broader scientific impact: “The Equinox and Solstice systems are designed to accelerate a broad set of scientific AI workflows, and we are collaborating with Oracle and NVIDIA to prepare thousands of researchers to effectively leverage the systems’ groundbreaking capabilities. This system will seamlessly connect to forefront DOE experimental facilities such as our Advanced Photon Source, allowing scientists to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges through scientific discovery.”
Commercial Development Progress
Helion Provides Unprecedented Access to Polaris Prototype
On October 28, Helion Energy provided media with a rare behind-the-scenes tour of Polaris, its seventh-generation fusion prototype housed in Everett, Washington, offering unprecedented transparency into the company’s technical approach and progress. [CNN] [GeekWire]
The Polaris facility, operational since December 2024, represents Helion’s most advanced fusion system to date. The tour revealed the scale of Helion’s engineering achievement: 2,500 specialized power units housing capacitors that collectively deliver 100 gigawatts of peak power in sub-millisecond pulses, connected by 720 miles of specialized coaxial cables designed to handle the extreme currents required for magnetic compression of fusion fuel.
Unlike most fusion approaches that pursue continuous plasma confinement and ignition, Helion is developing pulsed fusion generators that operate approximately once per second using deuterium and helium-3 fuel. The company’s Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) approach creates self-organizing plasma structures that are compressed to fusion conditions by powerful magnetic fields. Polaris has successfully formed the largest and most stable FRC plasmas Helion has created, validating key physics principles for the company’s commercial design.
The tour comes as Helion races toward its ambitious 2028 target for delivering at least 50 megawatts of electricity to Microsoft under what represents the world’s first commercial fusion power purchase agreement with a concrete delivery timeline. Construction of the commercial Orion facility in Malaga, Washington, began in July 2025 following regulatory approvals, and remains on schedule.
Helion raised $425 million in Series F funding in January 2025, bringing its valuation to $5.4 billion. The company is pursuing a strategy of vertical integration, bringing specialized manufacturing of critical components like high-voltage capacitors and advanced magnetic coils in-house to accelerate timelines and reduce costs. This approach contrasts with many fusion companies that rely on external suppliers for key components.
International Policy Coordination and Strategic Commitments
G7 Energy Ministers Issue Joint Statement on Fusion Energy
On October 31, G7 Energy Ministers meeting in Toronto, Canada, issued a joint Statement on Nuclear and Fusion Energy that formally recognized fusion’s potential to significantly contribute to meeting growing global energy demand. [Government of Canada] [Canada Press Release]
The statement represents a significant elevation of fusion in international energy policy discussions, acknowledging global advances and investment in fusion technology while emphasizing “the importance of sustained international collaboration on fusion energy with trusted partners, encouraging private investments and public engagement.”
Critically, the G7 ministers committed to continuing the G7 Working Group on Fusion Energy, which was launched under Italy’s G7 Presidency in 2024 and continued under Canada’s leadership in September 2025. The working group provides a platform for exchanging progress updates, sharing best practices, coordinating research and development efforts among trusted fusion centers, and working toward harmonization of technical standards and regulatory approaches.
The ministers emphasized that international coordination will be essential for fusion deployment: “Looking ahead, we emphasize the continued necessity of sharing best practices, cooperation amongst trusted fusion-relevant Research and Development centres and harmonization of standards as well as consistent approaches to fusion regulations as appropriate, which would enable the deployment of fusion energy technologies.”
This G7 statement reflects growing recognition at the highest levels of government that fusion is transitioning from a distant aspiration to a near-term technology requiring coordinated policy frameworks, regulatory harmonization, and sustained international cooperation. The statement also acknowledges the role of private investment in accelerating fusion development, signaling government support for public-private partnerships in fusion commercialization.
ITER Supply Chain and Manufacturing Progress
China Delivers Critical ITER Components; U.S. Ships First Transmission Lines
Shanghai Electric marked two significant milestones for ITER this week. On October 31, the company announced successful delivery of magnet cold-test cryostat equipment to the ITER site at Cadarache, France, representing a major contribution to ITER’s testing infrastructure. [Morningstar] This followed the October 28 delivery of the world’s largest toroidal field coil case to China’s Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT) in Hefei—a 400-tonne structure measuring 21 meters by 12 meters, constructed entirely from ultra-low-temperature austenitic stainless steel.
The toroidal field coil case is more than 1.2 times the size and roughly twice the weight of equivalent ITER components, demonstrating China’s advancing capabilities in large-scale fusion component manufacturing. Shanghai Electric chairman Wu Lei emphasized the strategic significance: “These achievements underscore Chinese firms’ technological prowess and support their role in global fusion collaboration.”
Simultaneously, the first U.S.-manufactured transmission line components for ITER—including miter bends and expansion units—were shipped to France on October 27. [ITER Organization] These specialized waveguide components will carry 170 gigahertz microwave power at up to 1 megawatt per line from gyrotrons to the tokamak, where the microwaves will heat and help control the fusion plasma.
Additionally, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries completed fabrication of the first outer vertical target of ITER’s divertor—the component that will handle the enormous heat and particle fluxes from the plasma edge. With the first unit successfully manufactured, series production is now underway for the full set of divertor components.
These supply chain developments demonstrate the maturing industrial ecosystem supporting ITER and, by extension, future commercial fusion plants. The ability to manufacture precision components at this scale, meeting exacting specifications for materials, tolerances, and performance, represents critical progress toward establishing the industrial base necessary for fusion commercialization.
What This Week Signals
The convergence of developments this week—breakthrough plasma control in advanced tokamak geometries, successful demonstration of next-generation superconducting magnet technologies, unprecedented AI computational infrastructure dedicated to fusion research, commercial facility transparency and progress, high-level international policy coordination, and robust supply chain development—paints a comprehensive picture of an industry rapidly advancing across all dimensions necessary for commercialization.
What distinguishes this moment is the simultaneous progress across fundamentally different fusion approaches (spherical tokamaks, stellarators, and pulsed systems), the integration of cutting-edge AI capabilities into fusion research and development, and the emergence of coordinated international policy frameworks specifically addressing fusion deployment challenges. Rather than isolated breakthroughs in individual laboratories or companies, the fusion sector is demonstrating systematic advancement of the entire ecosystem—technical, computational, commercial, regulatory, and industrial—required to transition from experimental devices to commercial power plants.
The G7’s explicit commitment to sustained collaboration, the DOE’s massive investment in AI infrastructure for scientific discovery, UKAEA’s validation of ELM control in spherical tokamaks, Helical Fusion’s HTS coil demonstration, and Helion’s transparency about commercial progress collectively signal that fusion’s transition from “perpetually 30 years away” to concrete near-term deployment is accelerating. The mid-2030s timeline for commercial fusion, articulated in recent roadmaps and power purchase agreements, appears increasingly credible as technical, computational, policy, and industrial capabilities converge.
Upcoming Event Preview
World Nuclear Exhibition (November 4-6, 2025) ITER will participate with a major panel: “From Breakthroughs to Industry: Delivering Fusion Energy at Global Scale” featuring ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, IAEA representatives, Westinghouse, and EU Commission officials. Expected attendance: 25,000+ participants in Paris. [ITER] [World Nuclear Exhibition]
Major Sources:
- UK Atomic Energy Authority
- U.S. Department of Energy
- NVIDIA Newsroom
- Government of Canada G7
- ITER Organization
- Helion Energy
- World Nuclear News
