UAE establishes Emirates Fusion Initiative under ENEC and TII

Abu Dhabi launches sovereign fusion program backed by $400M initial allocation, partnering with Korea's KFE and U.K. AEA.

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) and the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) jointly announced the Emirates Fusion Initiative (EFI), a sovereign fusion research and commercialization program backed by an initial $400 million allocation over five years. The program will be headquartered at the TII campus in Masdar City and aims to combine domestic plasma physics capacity with technology partnerships abroad.

EFI's initial agreements include a co-development memorandum with Korea's KFE on superconducting magnet integration and a hosted-experiment agreement with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) covering data sharing from the JET legacy archive and the planned STEP prototype. Discussions with Commonwealth Fusion Systems on a potential ARC follow-on pilot site in the Western Region are reported but not confirmed.

ENEC chief executive Mohamed Al Hammadi positioned the program as a natural extension of the UAE's Barakah fission build-out: “We are the only Arab state operating a four-unit civil nuclear plant. Fusion is the next 30-year horizon.” The announcement makes the UAE the first Gulf state with a formal fusion R&D program.