[Image: Shutterstock]
For decades, commercially viable fusion energy has been a tantalizing but elusive goal for scientists and society. If fusion power plants were successfully realized, they would provide a potentially carbon-free source to meet the planet’s ever-growing energy appetite. In late 2022, the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA, achieved the first successful fusion ignition, but significant obstacles to commercialization still remain.
Now, the quest for laser fusion has a new player in Germany—PriFUSIO. This public–private consortium, led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) and funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will bring together companies and research institutions with the goal of advancing key technologies to enable fusion power plants.
Better together
At the heart of the PriFUSIO project is the collaboration between industrial and academic partners. The foundation has seven participating companies of a variety of sizes and stages, including startups Focused Energy and Marvel Fusion, glass manufacturer Schott AG, midsized optics and coatings firm Laseroptik and worldwide laser-tools giant Trumpf. Anchoring the academic side are Fraunhofer’s ILT and Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) along with the Laser Zentrum Hannover.
Together, the consortium members will take on some of the most daunting technological challenges facing commercial laser fusion. Chief among these is developing the next generation of lasers suitable for power plants, which must generate beams at high energy levels with extremely high power. Adding to that difficulty, the resulting plasma must also be well-controlled to harness the resulting fusion energy. These requirements place very high demands on the materials, engineering and the highly complex optical systems involved.
Together, the consortium members will take on some of the most daunting technological challenges facing commercial laser fusion.
“PriFUSIO will bring together the expertise of the partners along the process chain,” explained Hans-Dieter Hoffmann, Fraunhofer ILT. Hoffman adds that if the group succeeds in meeting the stringent conditions for an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant, PriFUSIO “will also result in synergies for industrial lasers that go beyond the application in IFE technology ... For this reason, PriFUSIO will help strengthen the participating industrial partners in their respective markets.”
Germany funds fusion
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has allocated €18 million for PriFUSIO over the next three years. That endowment constitutes just a tiny share of larger fusion funding program, “Fusion 2040 – Research towards the fusion power plant,” launched by the research ministry in March 2024. Before the announcement of the new program, in September 2023, the German government had already pledged in 2023 to provide more than €1 billion in fusion research funding through 2028. A Fraunhofer Institute press release suggested that the German government’s investment under the new Fusion 2040 framework could go as high as €5 billion, with the goal of making the country a pioneer in fusion technologies and enabling the construction of a fusion power plant.
“We want to build a fusion ecosystem of industry, startups and R&D that pools existing strengths and creates synergies between the various players,” said Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Minister of Education and Research, on the launch of the Fusion 2040 program. We must not miss this huge opportunity—especially when we consider our growth and prosperity.”