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Accelerated iteration in FRCs: Helion's 'Tiny Merge' testbed

An eight-foot tubular testbed less than one-eighth the size of Polaris enables rapid, low-cost diagnostic iterations for FRC plasma-ring formation and merging.

EVERETT, WA — June 3, 2026 · By Fusion Energy News Desk

Science

Direct energy conversion and the viability of aneutronic fuel cycles

Helion's Polaris targets D–He³ with magnetic induction recovery; TAE forms an FRC entirely from neutral beams en route to p–B11.

EVERETT, WA — June 3, 2026

Science

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 — September 18, 2025

Overcoming plasma instabilities via sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinches

Zap Energy's FuZE-3 hits 830 MPa electron pressure with a novel third electrode, putting the sheared-flow Z-pinch on a path to scientific gain.

EVERETT, WA — June 3, 2026

Science

Yield scaling and wall-plug efficiency in inertial confinement fusion

NIF posts an 8.6 MJ shot at gain >4, but commercial ICF hinges on diode-pumped lasers reaching 10–18% wall-plug efficiency.

LIVERMORE, CA — June 3, 2026

Science

The physics of pulsed magnetic inertial fusion

Pacific Fusion is building a 10 MJ demonstration facility in Albuquerque targeting net facility gain by 2030.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM — June 3, 2026

Science

Advancing fusion-fission hybrid reactor architectures

China tenders environmental assessment for the 20 billion yuan Xinghuo HTS hybrid facility in Nanchang.

NANCHANG, CHINA — June 3, 2026

Science

State-directed heavy infrastructure — China's BEST and CFETR tokamaks

EAST hits 1,066 seconds of H-mode as construction begins on the Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak.

HEFEI, CHINA — June 3, 2026

Science

Quasi-isodynamic stellarators: the path to 'Stellaris'

Proxima Fusion signs agreement with RWE and Bavaria to site Stellaris at the decommissioned Gundremmingen nuclear fission site.

GARCHING, GERMANY — June 3, 2026

Science

Scaling magnetized target fusion (MTF) with liquid metal liners

General Fusion's Lawson Machine 26 is the world's first MTF demonstration machine built at 50 percent of commercial-scale diameter.

VANCOUVER, BC — June 3, 2026

Science

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 — August 14, 2025

Science

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 — October 22, 2025

Science

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 — October 6, 2025

Science

Parasitic D-D Reactions in D-³He Plasmas: Managing the 5% Neutron Leakage

Editorial Board: D-3He is not perfectly clean. Suppressing parasitic D-D branching is an exercise in ruthless plasma confinement.

EDITORIAL — October 29, 2025

Science

Princeton PPPL demonstrates ML-based disruption prediction at 95% accuracy

Convolutional network trained on DIII-D and JET data predicts plasma disruptions 50 ms in advance.

PRINCETON, NJ — May 28, 2026

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Citations & Sources

Academic & financial rigor

[01]
Fusion Industry Association — Annual Report
FIA · 2025
[02]
DOE Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program
U.S. Department of Energy