Standing tall

The Fusion Industry Association (FIA) released its 2026 Supply Chain Report. The annual report surveyed 25 private fusion companies and 67 suppliers to find a 24% spending increase among respondents, from USD 434 million in 2024 to USD 538 million in 2025. The FIA projects supply chain spending to grow by another 27% this year.

“We see signs of the ‘chicken and egg’ gridlock raised in previous reports easing, as supplier relationships improve and new and existing suppliers invest in scaling up capacity to meet the sector’s growing needs,” said FIA CEO Andrew Holland. 

Over the past year, 70% of surveyed suppliers increased their business with fusion companies and 75% made investments (in people, training, equipment, infrastructure, and manufacturing capability) ranging from USD 30,000 to USD 65 million to grow their capacity to support fusion. 

However, challenges remain. Only a quarter (26%) of the fusion company respondents found existing suppliers to be successfully scaling their capacity. Namely, nearly half of respondents currently face constraints related to heat management technologies (44%) and power systems and components (48%). Likewise, many cite first-wall materials (40%) and fuel cycle systems (48%) as future bottlenecks. 

“Building that capability and capacity will need a truly collaborative effort between policymakers, investors, the supply chain and fusion companies,” said Holland.

The report can be downloaded from the FIA website at this address.

EUROfusion has opened applications for its 2027 Engineering Grants program, supporting the education and development of a new generation of fusion engineers. These two-year grants are aimed at young engineers with a Master's and/or PhD degree working in or entering the EUROfusion program. Around 14 grants are expected to be awarded.

The grants support career development in key competency areas for fusion and are awarded based on the excellence of the candidates. The eligibility rules allow applicants who completed their MSc degree between 1 June 2020 and 15 September 2026, and candidates may complete their PhD during the grant period.

The application deadline is 17 July 2026. See further details about the program and how to apply here.
 

The paper "Overview of the WEST contributions to the new ITER baseline and fusion power plants," presented at the IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in October 2025 (FEC 2025), has been published in the international journal Nuclear Fusion.

From the introduction: "In the context of the new ITER baseline, the WEST programme has recently increased its efforts in supporting the goal of a robust start of the ITER scientific exploitation. The WEST super-conducting tokamak is a full tungsten wall long pulse device equipped with an actively cooled ITER grade divertor. As such, it is ideally placed to address scientific and operational issues relevant to next step devices running long pulses in a full tungsten (W) environment. For this purpose, WEST has developed reliable, routine and controlled long pulse regimes with durations now reaching 1337s with the divertor actively cooled components."

"This paper reports on the key achievements of the past two years, namely: i) the making of long pulse discharges in WEST ii) the impact of high heat and particle flux on ITER grade plasma facing units (PFUs) iii) the plasma start-up in a full tungsten environment and the conditioning by Glow Discharge Boronization (GDB) mimicking the ITER set-up, iv) the progress in the X-point Radiator (XPR) controlled cold divertor plasma regime, and v) the WEST contribution to ITER key issues such as run-away mitigation and fuel retention. This paper will also present the future machine capabilities."

The accepted version of the article is available at this link.
 

On June 9, the US Department of Energy (DOE) released the final version of its Fusion Science and Technology (S&T) Roadmap, outlining a coordinated strategy to accelerate commercial fusion deployment. Building on earlier roadmap efforts, the finalized roadmap brings together fusion science, technology, infrastructure, workforce development, and commercialization priorities into a single national strategy to support fusion pilot plants and commercial fusion power in the mid-2030s.

Developed with input from more than 800 scientists and engineers across the public and private sectors, the Roadmap reflects contributions from private companies, national laboratories, and more than 70 universities. It identifies the critical science and technology gaps that must be closed to realize fusion pilot plants and lists the three drivers that underpin the unified national strategy:

• Building critical infrastructure to close fusion materials and technology gaps.
• Innovating through advanced research, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence.
• Growing the US fusion ecosystem through public-private partnerships, supply chain development, workforce growth, and commercialization pathways.

Read or download the US DOE's Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap here.