Pacific FusionIn Development
Pacific Fusion's first-of-a-kind machine, to be assembled at the $1B Mesa del Sol campus in Albuquerque from 156 production-scale pulser modules (each 32 circular stages ringed with 10 bricks). It is designed to reach net facility gain, producing more fusion energy than the total energy stored in the system, and to do it at roughly 100x the facility gain of the National Ignition Facility for about a tenth of the cost.
Latest update Sep 16, 2026
01
Under construction. Ground was broken on the Albuquerque campus on August 25, 2026, with components already being produced at the Los Lunas build center opened in December 2025; Nature reporters visiting Los Lunas that same month found two of the more than 150 full-scale production modules already completed. Pacific Fusion's Users Program FAQ, still current as of September 16, 2026, says Demonstration System commissioning is expected to begin in 2028, with net facility gain targeted by 2030. The company stresses this is a demonstration machine, not a power plant.
02
03
Announced next steps from Pacific Fusion that mention Demonstration System.
2026-2027
Complete and test full-scale pulser modules, each roughly 40x the size of Sirius and 3x the June 2026 scaled prototype, to prove the unit that will be manufactured 156 times over for the Demonstration System. Nature reporters visiting the Los Lunas build center in August 2026 found two of the more than 150 full-scale modules already completed. Re-verified as of September 16, 2026: company updates through September 15 still describe demonstrating a full-scale pulser module as the next major technical checkpoint; no public full-scale module test result has been posted.
2026-2030
Manufacture and assemble all 156 production-scale pulser modules at the New Mexico campus, supported by component production at the Los Lunas build center, and integrate them with the target chamber and diagnostics. Ground was broken August 25, 2026; Users Program FAQ still dates commissioning to 2028.
2027-2029
Pacific Fusion launched the Users Program on March 4, 2026 with a call for Expressions of Interest from academia, national labs, government and industry; submissions are now closed. The Users Program FAQ, still current as of September 16, 2026, keeps the next phase as a detailed Call for Proposals in 2027, with Demonstration System commissioning expected to begin in 2028 and the first external-user campaigns anticipated in 2029.
2028
After manufacturing and assembling the 156-module Demonstration System at Mesa del Sol, Pacific Fusion's Users Program FAQ, still current as of September 16, 2026, says commissioning is expected to begin in 2028, ahead of first external-user campaigns in 2029 and the 2030 net-facility-gain target. Watch whether that 2028 window holds as full-scale pulser-module testing proceeds.
2030
Fire the Demonstration System and produce more fusion energy than the total energy stored in the facility - a stricter bar than scientific breakeven and the result that would put pulser-driven inertial fusion on a commercial footing. Re-verified September 16, 2026: the 2030 target is unchanged on the company locations page, Users Program FAQ, and August groundbreaking coverage.
04
Pacific Fusion held a groundbreaking ceremony on August 25 for its $1 billion research and manufacturing campus at Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque, which will house the Demonstration System the company is targeting for net facility gain by 2030. The event drew board chairman Eric Schmidt, US Senators Martin Heinrich and John Hickenlooper, NNSA administrator Brandon Williams and Sandia National Laboratories director Laura McGill, with the project expected to create about 200 permanent jobs.
Pacific Fusion and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that Sirius, their four-stage impedance-matched Marx generator prototype, has completed 3,000 full-power shots, each delivering 60 gigawatts in a 100-nanosecond pulse at 95% energy efficiency. The reliability campaign provides the empirical base for the much larger 156-module Demonstration System Pacific Fusion is targeting for net facility gain by 2030.
05
The repeating building block of the Demonstration System: an impedance-matched Marx generator that stacks capacitor-and-switch 'bricks' into stages and synchronizes them into a single ultra-fast, high-current pulse. Getting one module right and then manufacturing it 156 times is the company's whole scaling strategy.
The four-stage impedance-matched Marx generator prototype built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under a cooperative research agreement. Sirius synchronizes electromagnetic waves onto a transmission line in a single step, which is what makes the architecture simpler and more efficient than conventional pulsed-power systems, and it is the machine that generated the empirical data validating Pacific Fusion's simulations.
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Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Compact, high-field tokamak designed to demonstrate net energy from fusion. It uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to achieve reactor-class magnetic fields in a much smaller machine, with peer-reviewed projections of roughly Q ~11 and ~140 MW of fusion power.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems
CFS' first planned grid-scale commercial fusion power plant, designed to deliver about 400 MW of clean electricity using the HTS magnet and tokamak stack proven through SPARC. The project is officially named the Fall Line Fusion Power Station and is planned for a 100-acre site at the James River Industrial Center in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
Helion Energy
7th-generation fusion prototype designed to demonstrate electricity production from fusion using Helion's pulsed magneto-inertial architecture and direct electricity recapture.
Helion Energy
First commercial fusion power plant, designed to generate 50+ MWe. Located in Malaga, Chelan County, Washington, on land leased from Chelan County PUD near Rock Island Dam. Power will be marketed by Constellation Energy to Microsoft data centers.