Construire le savoir-faire, soudure après soudure

The 2026 Global Fusion Industry Report from the Fusion Industry Association identifies an important new driver for fusion investment and development: the soaring energy demands of artificial intelligence.

“This is a business problem as well as a political problem, as energy consumers around the world are feeling the cost of rising energy prices every day,” writes Andrew Holland, the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association. “Fusion will be the solution. Its approach of turning abundant, energy dense fuel into power, without carbon emissions, make it the only source of energy that will be able to scale up to meet constantly growing demand. Even though it cannot deliver today, the demand from the market is bringing fusion forward.”

The report states that $4.5 billion was invested in private-sector fusion companies in 2026, bringing total industry funding to $14.25 billion. The fusion workforce now numbers more than 16,000 employees.

The report also notes that governments are embracing new fusion strategies, while public-private partnerships are providing valuable opportunities for knowledge sharing.

Download the full report here.

The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) released its 2026 Supply Chain Report. The annual report surveyed 25 private fusion companies and 67 suppliers to find a 24% spending increase among respondents, from USD 434 million in 2024 to USD 538 million in 2025. The FIA projects supply chain spending to grow by another 27% this year.

“We see signs of the ‘chicken and egg’ gridlock raised in previous reports easing, as supplier relationships improve and new and existing suppliers invest in scaling up capacity to meet the sector’s growing needs,” said FIA CEO Andrew Holland. 

Over the past year, 70% of surveyed suppliers increased their business with fusion companies and 75% made investments (in people, training, equipment, infrastructure, and manufacturing capability) ranging from USD 30,000 to USD 65 million to grow their capacity to support fusion. 

However, challenges remain. Only a quarter (26%) of the fusion company respondents found existing suppliers to be successfully scaling their capacity. Namely, nearly half of respondents currently face constraints related to heat management technologies (44%) and power systems and components (48%). Likewise, many cite first-wall materials (40%) and fuel cycle systems (48%) as future bottlenecks. 

“Building that capability and capacity will need a truly collaborative effort between policymakers, investors, the supply chain and fusion companies,” said Holland.

The report can be downloaded from the FIA website at this address.

EUROfusion has opened applications for its 2027 Engineering Grants program, supporting the education and development of a new generation of fusion engineers. These two-year grants are aimed at young engineers with a Master's and/or PhD degree working in or entering the EUROfusion program. Around 14 grants are expected to be awarded.

The grants support career development in key competency areas for fusion and are awarded based on the excellence of the candidates. The eligibility rules allow applicants who completed their MSc degree between 1 June 2020 and 15 September 2026, and candidates may complete their PhD during the grant period.

The application deadline is 17 July 2026. See further details about the program and how to apply here.
 

The paper "Overview of the WEST contributions to the new ITER baseline and fusion power plants," presented at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in October 2025 (FEC 2025), has been published in the international journal Nuclear Fusion.

From the introduction: "In the context of the new ITER baseline, the WEST programme has recently increased its efforts in supporting the goal of a robust start of the ITER scientific exploitation. The WEST super-conducting tokamak is a full tungsten wall long pulse device equipped with an actively cooled ITER grade divertor. As such, it is ideally placed to address scientific and operational issues relevant to next step devices running long pulses in a full tungsten (W) environment. For this purpose, WEST has developed reliable, routine and controlled long pulse regimes with durations now reaching 1337s with the divertor actively cooled components."

"This paper reports on the key achievements of the past two years, namely: i) the making of long pulse discharges in WEST ii) the impact of high heat and particle flux on ITER grade plasma facing units (PFUs) iii) the plasma start-up in a full tungsten environment and the conditioning by Glow Discharge Boronization (GDB) mimicking the ITER set-up, iv) the progress in the X-point Radiator (XPR) controlled cold divertor plasma regime, and v) the WEST contribution to ITER key issues such as run-away mitigation and fuel retention. This paper will also present the future machine capabilities."

The accepted version of the article is available at this link.