News · Editorial Board
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Editorial Board essays
Signed long-form positions from our 27-contributor, 14-institution network. Each piece also appears in the relevant beat in the news feed.
- ScienceEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- ScienceEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- CapitalEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- ScienceEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- ScienceEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- ScienceEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- CapitalEDITORIAL — 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 Board of Fusion Energy News
- EngineeringEDITORIAL — 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.
Editorial Board of Fusion Energy News
A 30-essay 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.