The Reaction That Could Power Everything — Forever

Before we start.

When I first heard "fusion energy”,— I thought it was just joining things together.

I had no idea it was about seawater. About turning water into energy. The most powerful energy source humans have ever tried to build.

Right now — as you read this — 24-ton magnets are being craned into place in Massachusetts.

For real. Actual cranes. Actual magnets.

For a reactor that could change everything about how this planet runs on power.

I went looking for a newsletter topic. I found something I wasn't ready for.

First time reading about fusion energy? Skip to the bottom of this issue. I explain the basics in plain English — before the footer. 2 minutes. Come back up after.

In 2025, those numbers finally changed. Here is what I found.

On April 7 2025, NIF fired lasers at a target smaller than a pea.

Input: 2.08 megajoules. Output: 8.6 megajoules.

4.13 times more energy out than in.

Here's the trajectory that matters:

2022: 1.5x energy gain
February 2025: 2.4x
April 2025: 4.1x

Each step faster than the last.

One honest caveat. The lasers consumed around 300 megajoules just to deliver those 2.08 megajoules. The target won. The system didn't. Not yet.

But the target gain keeps improving. That trajectory is the story. Not where it is. Where it's going.

China went first. Their EAST tokamak. The date was January 2025. 1,066 seconds of sustained plasma. 17 minutes and 46 seconds. At 50 million degrees.

A world record.

Three weeks later, France's WEST tokamak held plasma for 1,337 seconds. 22 minutes and 17 seconds. At 50 million degrees. Three times hotter than the Sun's core.

France broke China's record. China will try to break France's.

This is what the fusion race looks like at the technical level. Two countries leapfrogging each other in plasma duration. Measured in seconds.

In Devens, Massachusetts. By a company spun out of MIT. Called Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

At CES 2026 in January, they installed the first of 18 magnets.

Each magnet weighs 24 tons. Each generates a 20 tesla magnetic field.

The CEO said it this way: "It's the type of magnet you could use to lift an aircraft carrier."

All 18 magnets will be installed by the end of summer 2026. First plasma: 2027. Net energy demonstrated: shortly after.

If that happens, the CEO called it the Kitty Hawk moment for fusion power.

The day everything changes.

And NVIDIA and Siemens are building a digital twin of the reactor before it even fires.

This is not a science project anymore. This is a construction project.

Every headline covered the science records. The plasma durations. The energy gains. The impressive numbers.

Nobody covered this part.

China Fusion Energy Co. was launched in 2025. $2.1 billion in registered capital.

The entire annual US federal fusion budget is around $1 billion. Let that sit for a second. And that's just one company.

China also has the CRAFT campus in Hefei. $700 million. Built to industrialise fusion components.

The Xinghuo project. $2.8 billion. Targeting the first phase operation in 2031.

Fusion sits as a key priority in China's 15th Five-Year Plan. 2026-2030.

The distinction matters more than most people realise. Scientific competitions produce papers. Industrial strategies produce supply chains. China is building the latter.

This is not a scientific competition. This is an industrial strategy.

America has seen this pattern before.

America invented solar panels. China manufactures 80% of them.

America led battery technology. China dominates battery supply chains.

The US is officially warning about this. If China leads fusion manufacturing, it could happen again. Same components. Same exports. Same control.

Control the components. Control the exports. Control who gets fusion power and at what price.

The US still leads in private fusion. 25 of 45 global fusion companies are American. $9-10 billion in private investment.

But private investment and state-directed industrial strategy are different races.

America is running one. China is running the other.

History doesn't suggest this. History has already shown it. Solar. Batteries. EVs. The pattern is not a warning. It's a track record.

Going into this research, I hadn't thought about what fusion is actually being built for.

I assumed it was just "clean energy in general."

The answer is more specific. And more urgent.

Let me write that again.

One gram. 2,400 gallons of oil. Zero direct CO2 emissions.

The fuel is deuterium. It comes from seawater. There is effectively an unlimited amount of it on Earth.

This is why fusion keeps getting called the last energy source humanity will ever need.

That claim sounds like marketing. It isn't. It's thermodynamics.

Fusion will not save us by 2030. It will not save us by 2040.

Every climate target between now and then has to be met by solar, wind, batteries, and storage.

Fusion is not the plan. Fusion is what comes after the plan.

That distinction matters enormously.

Because a growing number of people are using "fusion is coming" as an excuse to slow down everything else.

The scientists building fusion are the first to say: Don't wait for us. Build the renewables now. Fusion comes after.

Private fusion investment hit $4.4 billion in 2025 alone. $10-11 billion total globally.

A handful of private companies now control most reactor designs. And the patents that come with them.

Commonwealth Fusion. Helion. TAE Technologies. Among others.

Analysts are asking a question nobody has answered yet:

Fusion is too important to leave only to private markets.

Who decides where plants get built? Who decides who gets the power? Who decides the price?

Right now, the companies are building it.

That might be fine. It might not be. Nobody has decided yet.

And the technology is already being built.

Three things got decided in 2025-2026 that will matter for decades.

The US federal fusion budget sits around
$1 billion per year.

But private capital filled the gap.
25 of 45 global fusion companies
are American.
$9-10 billion in private investment.

The DOE Quantum Leadership Act opened pathways for fusion funding. States like Illinois layered on top.

And in December 2025, Trump Media merged with TAE Technologies in a $6 billion deal. The first fusion company to go public.

The bet: private competition and market incentives build faster than state planning.

$2.1 billion state-owned fusion company.
$700 million CRAFT industrial campus.
$2.8 billion Xinghuo project.
Fusion in the national Five-Year Plan.

The bet: coordinated state investment wins industrial races faster than markets do.

They've been right before. Solar panels. Batteries. EVs. All invented elsewhere. All are manufactured at scale in China.

The EU is building ITER in southern France. The largest fusion experiment ever attempted. 35 countries. $20 billion.

The UK has its own fusion programme. South Korea. Japan. India.

Everyone is building. Nobody is sharing everything.

The first country to achieve commercial fusion doesn't just get clean energy.

They get to set the standards. They get to control the exports. They get to decide who gets it next.

That is what this race is actually for.

I don't understand the physics well enough to have a strong opinion on which reactor design wins.

But I understand this:

Every country that controls fusion controls something more valuable than oil ever was.

Oil runs out. Fusion fuel comes from seawater. You cannot run out of seawater.

Think about what oil did to the 20th century. Every war. Every alliance. Every economy that rose or fell. Oil was at the centre of it. Fusion is that — but permanent. And clean. And unlimited in a way oil never was.

The SPARC reactor in Massachusetts will attempt first plasma in 2027.

That is not far away. That is next year.

If it works — the people building it think it will — the world enters a transition that cannot be undone. It will take decades. But it cannot be reversed.

Three questions nobody has answered yet. Who owns this technology? Who builds the first plants? Who sets the standards? Those decisions are being made right now.

Those decisions will matter more than almost anything happening in the news today.

Most people scrolling through the news today have never heard of SPARC.

Every other Saturday. One technology I went deep on, so you get the version that matters. Documented before it becomes obvious.

That's the whole reason I started this newsletter.

Go to fusionindustryassociation.org

Click "FIA Fusion Industry Report"

Download the free PDF.

Read only the first 5 pages.

It is the clearest summary of where the global fusion industry actually stands right now.

Written by the people building it. Not journalists writing about it.

There is a difference.

Your 2087 self will remember this week. The week you found out fusion was already being built. Not just promised.

Before you go — a quick explanation for first-time readers.

Fusion energy sounds complicated. The core idea isn't.

Every star in the universe runs on fusion.

Including our Sun.

The Sun works by forcing hydrogen atoms together under enormous gravity and heat. When they fuse, they release energy. A lot of it.

On Earth, we can't recreate the Sun's gravity. So we use two things instead:

Extreme heat — over 100 million degrees. Hotter than the Sun's core.

Powerful magnetic fields — to contain the plasma so it doesn't touch the walls and cool down.

That's the whole challenge. Get the plasma hot enough. Keep it stable long enough. Get more energy out than you put in.

For 70 years, we couldn't do it.

In December 2022, we did it for the first time.

In April 2025, we did it with 4x the energy gain.

The physics problem is largely solved. The engineering problem is what everyone is racing to solve now.

Start from Issue #01 here → https://the-2087-report.beehiiv.com/p/the-year-humans-built-their-last-invention

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THE 2087 REPORT Documenting the decade that builds the next century.

Published every other Saturday. Written for people paying attention.

→ the-2087-report.beehiiv.com

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