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DOE’s latest fusion strategy aims for commercial energy by the 2030s
The Department of Energy has released what it is calling a “finalized” national strategy to accelerate the development and commercialization of fusion energy, with the goal of scaling up the private fusion sector by the mid-2030s.
Released on June 9, the Fusion Science and Technology (FS&T) Roadmap builds on an earlier road map document the DOE released in October 2025, which itself echoed plans issued by the DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in 2023 and 2024.
According to the DOE, this finalized road map brings together fusion science, technology, infrastructure, workforce development, and commercialization priorities into a single national strategy, outlining how the DOE, industry, universities, and national laboratories will work together to accelerate the path toward U.S. commercial fusion energy.
Timothy P. Burke, Brian C. Kiedrowski
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 189 | Number 3 | March 2018 | Pages 199-223
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1388093
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo methods are developed using adjoint-based perturbation theory and the differential operator method to compute the sensitivities of the k-eigenvalue, linear functions of the flux (reaction rates), and bilinear functions of the forward and adjoint flux (kinetics parameters) to system dimensions for uniform expansions or contractions. The calculation of sensitivities to system dimensions requires computing scattering and fission sources at material interfaces using collisions occurring at the interface—which is a set of events with infinitesimal probability. Kernel density estimators are used to estimate the source at interfaces using collisions occurring near the interface. The methods for computing sensitivities of linear and bilinear ratios are derived using the differential operator method and adjoint-based perturbation theory and are shown to be equivalent to methods previously developed using a collision history–based approach. The methods for determining sensitivities to system dimensions are tested on a series of fast, intermediate, and thermal critical benchmarks as well as a pressurized water reactor benchmark problem with iterated fission probability used for adjoint-weighting. The estimators are shown to agree within 5% and of reference solutions obtained using direct perturbations with central differences for the majority of test problems.