More than 200 leaders from science, government, industry, and academia gathered today to accelerate California’s growing role as the nation’s top fusion energy hub. The event, called Accelerating California’s Fusion Energy Economy, marks California’s first statewide convening dedicated to advancing research, development, demonstration, and deployment of fusion energy. A fusion energy power plant would harness the same reaction that powers the sun and stars to provide a virtually limitless source of clean, baseload energy.
Hosted by the University of California San Diego, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and General Atomics, with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, the California Energy Commission, and the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the summit featured high-profile speakers from government and across the fusion landscape working to grow the state’s fusion ecosystem.
The convening follows the recent release of a landmark report by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which found that California’s fusion energy sector could generate more than $125 billion in economic impact and support up to 43,000 jobs over the next decade. Building off this recent news, experts and policymakers explored strategies to strengthen the state’s fusion ecosystem, from expanding research infrastructure and workforce training to growing the supply chain and enacting policies that attract investment and accelerate the path to commercialization.
“It was a great honor to hold California’s first statewide fusion energy summit at the University of California San Diego,” said Javer E. Garay, the inaugural director of the UC San Diego Fusion Engineering Institute. “With the public and private sectors pulling in the same direction all across the State, we have huge opportunities to solve the remaining roadblocks and scale up the production of fusion energy here in California and across the country.”
California already leads the United States in fusion research and development. The state is home to two of the world’s most advanced fusion facilities: The DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, operated by General Atomics for the U.S. Department of Energy, currently, the nation’s only operational tokamak user facility; and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which became the first in the world to achieve and repeat fusion ignition under the direction of the National Nuclear Security Administration. These ignition experiments – in which a fusion target produces more fusion energy than NIF’s lasers deliver to it – demonstrate the same fundamental physical reaction that could one day be the basis for fusion power plants.
A major aspect of the meeting focused on recent legislation and state incentives intended to drive fusion investments in the state. The summit also featured leaders from across the state’s growing fusion industry, emphasizing the need for regulatory clarity and expedited permitting to foster development of various hotspots in the State to become regional hubs for the fusion industry.
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