US, Japan Team Up for Commercialization of Fusion Energy

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) have agreed to cooperate on research and the development of the supply chain for the societal deployment of fusion energy.

The collaboration will be overseen by the DOE-MEXT’s decades-old Coordinating Committee on Fusion Energy (CCFE), now governed under a 2013 agreement between the governments of Japan and the USA for research and development in science and technology (STA).

The partnership, announced last week after a DOE-MEXT meeting in Washington, will “address the scientific and technical challenges of delivering commercially viable fusion energy for various fusion systems, through activities conducted pursuant to the STA”, according to a joint statement.

The two agencies plan to share access to or develop new facilities for fusion research and development. 

The partnership also involves promoting the international harmonization of regulatory frameworks on fusion energy, “including leveraging of rule-making efforts by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as ongoing discussions under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Agile Nations Fusion Energy Working Group”, the statement added.

Further, the DOE and MEXT will “identify and support the development of resilient global supply chains that facilitate commercial fusion deployment, welcoming and considering discussions among fusion industry groups in the respective countries”, the statement said.

They will also cooperate to promote relevant skills development, as well as societal acceptance of fusion energy.

“Fusion energy could provide a low-carbon, safe, sustainable and reliable energy supply with the potential to transform global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions and to enhance energy security and resilience”, the joint statement said.

“To fully realize these benefits, appropriate regulatory, social, and market policies are needed, alongside overcoming significant remaining technical challenges”, it added.

The CCFE is expected to hold a meeting “in the coming months”, the two agencies said.

The U.S. aims to have commercial-scale fusion power plants in the 2030s, as announced by the Biden administration April 19, 2022.

In 2022 the U.S. claimed a breakthrough in research to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear fusion in which the mass lost in the reaction could be converted into large amounts of energy, a state of energy breakeven called ignition. On December 13, 2022, the government-run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said an experiment it had conducted earlier that month achieved ignition, “meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it”.

Besides Japan, the U.S. is also seeking to build nuclear energy cooperation with the European Union and United Kingdom.

Last month at a meeting of the US-EU Energy Council, Washington and Brussels agreed to explore cooperation to curb the globe’s reliance on Russia in the nuclear energy supply chain.

“The United States and the EU intend to intensify cooperation to reduce dependency on Russia for nuclear materials and fuel cycle services, and support ongoing efforts by affected EU Member States to diversify nuclear supplies, as appropriate”, said a joint statement March 15. “The Council expressed support for multilateral efforts to identify alternative nuclear energy-related suppliers across the global nuclear supply chain for relevant countries”.

On November 8, the energy departments of the UK and U.S. announced a pact on cooperation to accelerate the commercial deployment of fusion energy through research and development projects, supply chain development, regulatory framework harmonization and skills development.

Like the U.S., the UK is targeting to have commercial-scale fusion power plants in the 2030s, as set out in the UK’s Fusion Strategy.

Japan, the UK and U.S. are parties to the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy, an agreement among over 20 governments reached at COP28.

The declaration, which also includes Canada and France, plans to “invite shareholders of the World Bank, international financial institutions, and regional development banks to encourage the inclusion of nuclear energy in their organizations’ energy lending policies”, as stated in the official text.

The declaration will promote small modular and advanced reactors for electricity generation, as well as industrial-scale technology for decarbonization “such as for hydrogen or synthetic fuels production”, according to the text of the declaration published by the U.S. DOE December 2.

The five countries—Canada, France, Japan, the UK and U.S.—followed up the declaration with an announcement December 7 of a planned $4.2 billion in government-led investments to support uranium production.

To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com