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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Bipartisan commission report urges national fusion strategy
In the report Fusion Forward: Powering America’s Future issued earlier this month by the Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy, it warns that the United States is on the verge of losing the fusion power race to China.
Noting that China has invested at least $6.5 billion in its fusion enterprise since 2023, almost three times the funding received by the U.S. Department of Energy’s fusion program over the same period, the commission report urges the U.S. government to prioritize the rapid commercialization of fusion energy to secure U.S. national security and restore American energy leadership.
SCSP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative making recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness in emerging technologies. Launched in fall 2024, the 13-member commission is led by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) and Jim Risch (R., Idaho), along with SCSP president and commission co-chair Ylli Bajraktari.
I. Funaki, K. Ueno, H. Yamakawa, Y. Nakayama, T. Kimura, H. Horisawa (19P04)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 226-228
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1357
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Magnetic sail (MagSail) is a next-generation deep space propulsion system, which uses the energy of the solar wind. The MagSail produces an artificial magnetic field and captures the energy of the solar wind plasma to propell a spacecraft in the direction of the solar wind. In order to conduct a scale-model experiment of the plasma flow of a MagSail, we developed a solar wind simulator based on a magnetoplasmadynamic arcjet, which obtained a high density (~1018 m-3) and high velocity (~60 km/s) plasma flow in a quasi-steady mode of about 1 ms duration. Based on scaling considerations, a solenoidal coil (18 mm in diameter and the magnetic flux density at the coil center ~ 1.9 T) was designed and was immersed into the plasma flow. A magnetic cavity, which is very similar to that of the geomagnetic field, was observed, although the magnetic cavity of MagSail is usually much smaller than the geomagnetic cavity of the Earth.
