DOE selects 28 projects for INFUSE awards

Yesterday, the Department of Energy's Office of Science announced $8.5 million in awards across 28 projects through the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program, which provides fusion companies with access to capabilities at U.S. universities and national laboratories, aiming to help them overcome critical scientific and technological hurdles.

The awards will go to 22 companies for work with 10 national labs and nine universities. Ten of the awards will go to nine companies receiving INFUSE awards for the first time.

The projects selected include advancing high-temperature superconducting magnets, developing reactor materials, building better diagnostics, and addressing fuel cycle and engineering challenges needed for commercial fusion power.

Fusion science and plasma modeling: Helion Energy will study field reversed configuration-relevant parameters by analyzing reconnection experiments at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory's FLARE facility to develop and validate models of micro-instabilities that may arise.

Two Realta Fusion projects were selected. One will develop kinetic simulation tools for the company's magnetic mirror approach, while the other will develop a conceptual fuel cycle design optimized for low tritium inventory.

Terra Fusion will develop a computational framework to refine the design of its centrifugal mirror fusion prototype.

OpenStar USA received two awards: one to apply plasma simulation tools to design divertor systems for the company's levitated dipole reactor concept, and another to develop and deploy a phase contrast imaging diagnostic system to perform measurements of plasma turbulence and fluctuation-induced transport.

Fusion magnets and superconductors: Maritime Fusion will experimentally validate its high-current rare earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) stacked-tape high temperature superconducting (HTS) cables.

SuperPower Inc. will develop a pulsed laser deposition target fabrication method to support its REBCO wire manufacturing.

Three Thea Energy projects were selected. One of them will study thermal cycling as a method for recovering radiation-induced performance degradation in HTS magnets.

Fusion materials and reactor components: Another Thea Energy project is to characterize properties of boron-based vapor shields designed to protect plasma-facing components.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will study swelling in vanadium alloys that are material candidates for fusion power plant components.

Starfire Industries will develop silicon carbide coatings as a barrier material for structural elements of molten salt breeding blankets.

Kyoto Fusioneering America will advance magnetohydrodynamic simulations for liquid metal breeding blankets.

The Electric Power Research Institute will create a catalog of irradiated materials produced in Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor to help researchers avoid duplicative testing and accelerate progress toward fusion energy.

Diagnostics and sensing technologies: Advanced hCMOS Systems is combining a gallium arsenide (GaAs) photodiode array with a radiation-tolerant, high-speed, and high-dynamic-range readout integrated circuit for imaging hard X-rays.

Canary Instruments is validating real-time tritium monitoring technology.

Los Alamos Plasma Technologies is developing new sensors for imaging bolometers that will enable the measurement of plasma radiation in different energy bands simultaneously.

Type One Energy had two projects selected, including one to create an AI-driven pipeline for rapid and automatic spectroscopy analysis to detect leaks, contamination, or damage to the interior of its fusion device. Type One's other project aims to develop its exhaust gas analyzer by testing it at higher magnetic fields and higher neutral pressure.

Thea Energy's third project is to develop active control strategies to suppress magnetic islands in quasi-axisymmetric stellarators.

Westinghouse Electric Company will identify and test neutron conversion layer materials to be used for neutron flux spectrum measurements suitable for the breeder blanket environment in a fusion power plant.

Pacific Fusion had two projects selected. One will measure praseodymium cross sections to improve activation-based diagnostics.

Inertial fusion energy: Blue Laser Fusion will be modeling a magnetically assisted dry-wall chamber concept for direct-drive inertial fusion energy.

Intensity Energy will be using Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's HYDRA code to re-create several heavy-ion indirect-drive target designs.

Marvel Fusion will develop its laser beam dump concept through modeling and prototyping.

Xcimer Energy will experimentally quantify liquid fuel redistribution and vapor pressure evolution in wetted foam targets.

Pacific Fusion's second project is to study a novel class of target that eliminates the need for an external coil to pre-magnetize the target.

Alternative concepts: Acceleron Fusion, which is pursuing muon-catalyzed fusion, will conduct ion beam experiments to measure pion production yields and absorption lengths in the company's muon production target materials.

Past and future awards: These 28 projects form the latest round of awards for the INFUSE program, which selected its first awardees in 2019. This cohort brings the total number of awarded projects to over 150, according to ORNL, which administers the INFUSE program together with PPPL and LLNL.

The ANS journal Fusion Science and Technology recently published a special issue featuring work from some of the past awardees.

Looking ahead, the request for assistance for fiscal year 2027 INFUSE awards opened on October 14 and closes on December 13.