27 contributors. 14 institutions. One byline when it matters.

Published essays

Long-form positions signed by the Editorial Board. Each piece is also scattered into the relevant beat in the news feed.

• EDITORIAL — August 14, 2025

  The Tritium Illusion: why D-T fusion is a dead end for baseload

  Editorial Board: 14.1 MeV neutrons destroy the machine designed to contain them. The path to grid-scale fusion is aneutronic.

• EDITORIAL — October 22, 2025

  Spherical Tokamaks: physics triumphs vs engineering nightmares

  Editorial Board: high-beta compact STs are the most viable path to commercial power density — if the center column survives.

• EDITORIAL — January 15, 2026

  Bypassing Carnot: the Direct Energy Conversion mandate

  Editorial Board: if fusion is to undercut fission, the reactor must be a native electrical device — not a 19th-century boiler.

• EDITORIAL — April 8, 2026

  The 2030 Commercialization Mirage: subsystem validation vs grid readiness

  Editorial Board: a validated prototype is not a commercial fleet. The honest commercialization horizon is 2036, not 2030.

• EDITORIAL — September 18, 2025

  Aneutronic Ambitions: Is Proton-Boron-11 Viable Before 2040?

  Editorial Board: p-11B is the holy grail, but the Lawson product deficit makes it a late-2030s target, not a 2030 grid solution.

• EDITORIAL — October 6, 2025

  The Helium-3 Bottleneck: Lunar Mining Hype vs. In-Situ Plasma Breeding

  Editorial Board: extraterrestrial mining is an economic fantasy. The only viable D-3He path is in-situ plasma breeding.

• EDITORIAL — November 11, 2025

  Bremsstrahlung Radiation Losses in High-Z Aneutronic Plasmas

  Editorial Board: without a world-class bremsstrahlung conversion strategy, aneutronic reactors become incredibly expensive x-ray flashlights.

• EDITORIAL — November 25, 2025

  Material Embrittlement: The Hidden OpEx Destroying D-T Commercial Models

  Editorial Board: 14.1 MeV neutrons systematically destroy reactor steel. Any LCOE model ignoring remote-handled rebuilds is fiction.

• EDITORIAL — December 9, 2025

  The Stellarator Renaissance: Can 3D Coils Ever Be Manufactured at Scale?

  Editorial Board: elegant physics, catastrophic manufacturing. The winner in the 2030s will be the machine that can be mass-produced.

• EDITORIAL — December 21, 2025

  Negative Triangularity: Eradicating ELMs by Reversing the D-Shape

  Editorial Board: H-mode with positive triangularity is operational suicide. ELM-free negative triangularity must become the standard.

• EDITORIAL — February 10, 2026

  Ignition vs. Steady-State: The Flawed Focus on Q-Factor over Wall-Plug Efficiency

  Editorial Board: Qplasma > 1 is the entry ticket, not the finish line. Without direct energy conversion, even Q > 20 cannot beat the Carnot limit.

• EDITORIAL — February 24, 2026

  The 30-Tesla Threshold: Pushing REBCO Beyond Safe Engineering Limits

  Editorial Board: B4 scaling is seductive, but B2 Lorentz forces will crush standard Hastelloy substrates. 30 T demands MP35N and carbon-fiber over-banding.

• EDITORIAL — March 24, 2026

  Structural Strain Management: MP35N Substrates and the 0.4% Delamination Cliff

  Editorial Board: the difference between a failed startup and a power plant is managing micro-strain at 20 Kelvin. Hastelloy will not survive >30 T.

• EDITORIAL — May 5, 2026

  The Supply Chain Chokehold: Global REBCO Tape Manufacturing Deficits

  Editorial Board: the race to the grid will be won by whoever secures 5,000 km of pristine REBCO tape, not by the best digital twin.

• EDITORIAL — May 19, 2026

  No-Insulation (NI) Coil Architectures: Current Sharing as a Double-Edged Sword

  Editorial Board: bare-metal NI coils are a lab trick, not a grid backbone. Smart insulation—VOx layers—is the only viable commercial path.

A 30-essay editorial roadmap runs through June 2026, covering fuel cycles, confinement geometries, magnets and structural limits, and the LCOE / 2030 commercialization debate. New pieces are added as they clear sub-board review.

The network behind the byline

Fusion Energy News is produced by a network of 27 contributors drawn from 14 universities and national programs. The group spans theorists, experimentalists, magnet and target engineers, and program leads — chosen so that no single confinement scheme, no single continent, and no single funding camp dominates the room when an Editorial Board position is being argued out.

Individual contributor names are listed on the bylines of the pieces they author. We do not publish a full masthead photo wall because several contributors hold positions at national labs and government programs where standing public association with commentary on private competitors creates a conflict we prefer to manage rather than create.

How an Editorial Board piece is produced

1. A draft position is circulated to the relevant sub-board — magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, capital and policy, or supply chain — depending on the topic.
2. At least three contributors from at least two institutions must review and concur on the central claim before the piece moves to the editing desk.
3. Any contributor with a material interest in a named subject — equity, active grant, advisory seat — recuses from the discussion. Recusals are logged internally.
4. The piece is signed off by the Managing Editor and published under "Editorial Board of Fusion Energy News." The position belongs to the publication, not to any single contributor.

When a contributor is named

An individual byline is used — never the Board byline — when any of the following hold:

• The piece is a first-person essay, reported column, or technical primer where the author's vantage point is the substance.
• The piece is a guest contribution from a researcher outside our standing network.
• The author advances a position the Board has not adopted, and we want that to be unambiguous.
• The piece is a research note where one contributor's domain expertise carries the analysis (e.g. a REBCO supply chain teardown by a magnet engineer).

In all of these, the author's affiliations and any relevant conflicts are disclosed inline, consistent with our disclosures policy.

Reporters do not take positions

The Editorial Board is structurally separated from the reporting desk. Reporters covering funding rounds, milestone announcements, and program news are never asked — and not permitted — to write under the Board byline on companies, programs, or policy outcomes within their beat. This is the single rule that makes the Board byline mean anything.

What the Board byline is not

• It is not anonymous. Members are known internally, accountable to the Managing Editor, and named on individual pieces when they author them.
• Drafts, edits, and final sign-off are human. Tools may be used for transcription, translation, or research recall — never for argument or conclusions.
• It is not sponsored. No company, fund, or program pays for placement, framing, or omission. See disclosures.
• It is not consensus-by-default. When the Board cannot reach concurrence, we publish under named bylines or we do not publish.

Rebuttals and corrections

Subjects named in an Editorial Board piece may submit a reply. Substantive, on-the-record rebuttals from principal investigators, CEOs, or program directors are considered for publication as standalone response pieces — not buried as comments. Factual corrections are logged publicly; email corrections@fusionenergynews.com.

For the underlying data and verification process behind our reporting, see the methodology page.