How fusion power works and the startups pursuing it

The article discusses the longstanding human pursuit of harnessing fusion power—the process of generating energy by fusing atoms, similar to the reactions powering stars—to produce electricity on Earth. While controlled nuclear fusion has been achieved experimentally, no facility has yet produced a sufficient energy surplus to enable commercial power generation. Recently, fusion startups have attracted over $10 billion in investments, driven by rising energy demands and technological advances, bringing the industry closer to viable fusion reactors that could feed power into the grid. Two primary approaches to fusion power are highlighted: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement. Magnetic confinement uses powerful magnetic fields to contain superheated plasma. Within this category, tokamaks and stellarators are the main device types. Tokamaks, such as the Joint European Torus (JET) and ITER, confine plasma in doughnut-shaped chambers and have been extensively studied since the 1950s. Stellarators, like Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X, use twisted magnetic fields tailored to plasma behavior for confinement