Pacific Fusion Breaks Ground on Facility to Advance Commercial Fusion Power

Fusion energy startup Pacific Fusion has broken ground on a new facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, designed to test technology aimed at reaching a major milestone for commercial fusion power.

The company’s demonstration facility is being built to generate as much energy as it consumes, a goal known as net facility gain. Pacific Fusion says reaching this milestone would mark an important step toward developing practical fusion power plants.

Pacific Fusion targets net facility gain by 2030

Fusion researchers have achieved controlled fusion reactions that produce more energy than the fuel input. Still, no system has yet generated enough power to offset the total energy required to operate the entire facility.

Pacific Fusion aims to achieve net facility gain by 2030 and hopes to operate a commercial fusion power plant by the middle of the 2030s. The company said a commercial-scale reactor would need to generate significantly more energy than its demonstration system because a power plant requires additional equipment and infrastructure.

The new facility will test Pacific Fusion’s approach, which uses powerful, coordinated electrical pulses to create a magnetic field around a small fuel target. The process compresses the fuel until its atoms fuse, releasing energy.

The new system uses high-powered electrical pulses

The demonstration facility will use 156 pulser modules to generate the electrical pulses required for the fusion process. Each module contains multiple stages made up of energy-storage components and switches that release power.

Earlier testing of a smaller version of one pulser module produced 440 gigawatts of peak power over 80 nanoseconds, results that helped the company move forward with construction of the larger demonstration facility.

The facility will initially conduct only a handful of fusion shots per day. A future commercial power plant would need to operate at a much higher frequency, aiming to complete one shot every second.

Startup expands fusion ambitions

Beyond energy research, Pacific Fusion’s campus will also support national security-related fusion experiments. The company said each pulse from its demonstration system could produce about 100 megajoules of energy, around 10 times the output of the National Ignition Facility.

Founded in 2023, Pacific Fusion has quickly become one of the better-funded fusion startups, raising more than $1 billion through a milestone-based Series A round. The company said the funding structure allows it to plan for longer-term development without frequent fundraising.

Pacific Fusion is competing with other well-funded fusion companies, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy, Proxima Fusion, and Inertia Enterprises, all working toward commercial fusion power during the 2030s.