Road map highlights: The document identifies the key research, materials, and technology gaps that must closed to build a fusion pilot plant and strengthen U.S. leadership in the global fusion industry. Those gaps span materials, plasma systems, fuel cycles, and plant engineering with the goal of delivering public infrastructure to support private-sector fusion energy scale up in the 2030s.
The Fusion S&T Roadmap is built around three primary drivers:
- Building critical infrastructure to close fusion materials and technology gaps.
- Innovating through advanced research, high-performance computing, and AI.
- Growing the U.S. fusion ecosystem through public-private partnerships, regional manufacturing hubs, and workforce development.
The road map also outlines the DOE’s plan to address these challenges through coordinated investments in six core fusion science and technology areas: structural materials, plasma-facing components, confinement systems, fuel cycle, blankets, and plant engineering and integration.
“Fusion is real, near, and ready for coordinated action,” said Jean Paul Allain, associate director of DOE-FES. “This road map provides the strategic foundation for building the scientific, technical, and industrial base needed to ensure American leadership in commercial fusion on an ambitious timeline.”
What’s new again: Past DOE-FES plans and guidance, like the new road map, have focused on bridging gaps in critical science, materials, and technology; supporting a fusion pilot plant; and bridging the work of public and private sectors. Work to date has included establishing six Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) collaboratives, eight participants in a Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, and three inertial fusion energy (IFE) hubs.
The new road map includes building an “AI-Fusion Digital Convergence Platform” as one of 10 “key actions,” acknowledging that “AI has become a transformative tool for fusion energy and the U.S. ecosystem is harnessing the exponential growth of AI technology.”
The key action “will thread the AI-fusion convergence as a national capability that will weave through all DOE fusion program elements.” According to the document, which details several specific applications of the use of AI to address fusion development challenges, “By building the AI-fusion digital convergence, DOE is defining a path to this future, accelerating the commercialization of fusion power plant, to achieve U.S. energy dominance and provide the abundant power needed to drive the next generation of AI and computing.”
FESAC’s role: The new road map is “strongly aligned to the 2020 Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) Long-Range Plan (LRP),” combining “the FESAC LRP critical science drivers with a revamped FES public program in the DOE Office of Science (SC) to define a new era of U.S. fusion energy leadership.”
On September 30, the DOE announced the formation of an Office of Science Advisory Committee that “will adopt the core functions of the six former discretionary Office of Science advisory committees,” a change that includes and effectively dissolves FESAC. According to the DOE, “Members of SCAC will be experts covering all aspects of Office of Science research and will be appointed by Under Secretary Gil.” Further, “any current charged responsibilities of these former committees will be transferred to the SCAC.”
The Department of Energy introduced a Fusion Science & Technology (S&T) Roadmap on October 16 as a national “Build–Innovate–Grow” strategy to develop and commercialize fusion energy by the mid-2030s by aligning public investment and private innovation. Hailed by Darío Gil, the DOE’s new undersecretary for science, as bringing “unprecedented coordination across America's fusion enterprise” and advancing President Trump’s January 2025 executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” the road map echoes plans issued by the DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) in 2023 and 2024, with a new emphasis on the convergence of AI and fusion.
