DOE funds ORNL and Kyoto Fusioneering test facility

Yesterday, Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced that the Department of Energy has committed funding to develop a fusion breeding blanket test facility at the lab in partnership with Kyoto Fusioneering, and the company announced it will be relocating its U.S. headquarters to Oak Ridge, Tenn., with support from the state of Tennessee's Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Investment Fund.

Breeding blanket development: The facility, UNITY-3, was announced in January and is part of Kyoto Fusioneering's Unique Integrated Testing Facility Program (UNITY).

According to ORNL, the facility will house an accelerator capable of generating 14 MeV neutrons, typical of those produced by a burning plasma, which can be used to conduct breeding blanket experiments under fusion-like conditions.

Researchers will use the facility's advanced sensors, which the lab said will be capable of measuring neutron energies and tritium production levels with "unprecedented sensitivity and precision" to evaluate candidate commercial blanket designs and validate simulations of tritium fuel production.

"Pairing Kyoto Fusioneering's deep expertise in fusion technology and integrated systems with ORNL's strengths in neutron science, materials, advanced manufacturing, and computing gives the United States a place to answer one of fusion's hardest questions-how breeding blankets perform in a real nuclear environment. We're proud to partner on UNITY-3 and to help build the shared infrastructure the fusion community depends on," said ORNL director Stephen Streiffer.

According to Kyoto Fusioneering, UNITY-3 is a "confinement-agnostic infrastructure" seeking to mature this foundational industry technology in a way that works across fusion approaches.

"Every [deuterium-tritium] fusion power plant being designed assumes a breeding blanket that works-yet no one has ever validated one under real fusion-nuclear conditions. UNITY-3 is where that changes: a shared proving ground that replaces assumptions with measured data for the entire industry," said Bibake Uppal, president of Kyoto Fusioneering America. "We came to Oak Ridge because nowhere else brings together the fusion nuclear science and computing this challenge demands."

Kyoto Fusioneering is also a collaborator on General Atomics' Fusion Blanket Component Test Facility that was announced in June.

Digital models and Genesis: According to ORNL, the high-fidelity data collected at UNITY-3 will be used to "train and validate AI-accelerated digital twins of breeding blanket concepts and advance the technologies needed for fusion systems to create their own fuel."

Realizing fusion energy on the grid is one of the Genesis Mission challenges. Kyoto Fusioneering said that the data from UNITY-3 would support the development of the AI-Fusion Digital Convergence Platform called for by the mission.

Japan is the first international partner to the U.S.'s Genesis Mission. At the Genesis Mission 2026 summit, Shigeo Yamada, Japanese ambassador to the United States, said ORNL and Kyoto Fusioneering are "bringing together the strength of our countries."

Kyoto Fusioneering relocation: The company chose to relocate to Oak Ridge, it said, due to the area containing "one of the deepest concentrations of nuclear expertise anchored by ORNL, a deep and growing supply chain, a skilled technical workforce, a pro-investment business climate, and a community with a long nuclear heritage and strong public support for the technology."

According to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Kyoto Fusioneering will create 51 new jobs and invest $46.9 million in Anderson County through the relocation and UNITY-3.

"By partnering with ORNL and locating in Oak Ridge, the company is poised to accelerate its growth and innovation while strengthening our state's nuclear energy ecosystem. This collaboration will create new opportunities for Tennesseans to step into cutting-edge roles and help shape the future of advanced energy," said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

UNITY: The UNITY program also includes the UNITY-1 test facility in Kyoto, Japan, which has been researching the nonnuclear behavior of a liquid-metal breeding blanket, including thermal testing, isotope extraction, and power generation, as well as the UNITY-2 deuterium-tritium fuel cycle facility under development at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, through Fusion Fuel Cycles.

According to Kyoto Fusioneering, Idaho National Laboratory is collaborating with the company on UNITY-1, and Savannah River National Laboratory is collaborating with the company on UNITY-2.