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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
Fermi America, Texas Tech share vision for massive power and data complex
Texas Tech University and Fermi America shared plans on June 26 to build “the world’s largest advanced energy and artificial intelligence campus” in Amarillo, Texas, near the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. Fermi America is a company cofounded by former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry and his son, Griffin Perry, a cofounder and past senior advisor at Grey Rock Investment Partners. The announcement—a first press release from relative newcomer Fermi America—says the company “proudly answers President Donald J. Trump’s call to deliver global energy and AI dominance.”
D. A. Humphreys
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 3 | April 2011 | Pages 619-620
Appendix A | Fourth ITER International Summer School (IISS2010) / Extended Abstracts | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11703
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An attractive power plant candidate must provide power >70% of the time in a given operational year, typically implying that the frequency of key component failures resulting in unplanned loss of plant availability must be reduced to <0.001/yr. Present fusion devices typically have little motivation to operate with such high reliability and allow relatively frequent instability-driven plasma-terminating events known as disruptions. The vision of an operational fusion reactor therefore includes a level of reliable control performance and confidence well beyond that of presently operating devices. Maximizing use of the limited number of discharges planned for ITER also implies a major advance in control reliability. Fortunately, the mature field of control theory offers methods that routinely provide such levels of performance in many fields from aerospace to process control. [first paragraph from extended abstract]