USA lagging behind China in the nuclear merger necessary for the power II

China and the United States are in the race to create the first network nuclear synthesis. After a decades, the US leadership catching up with twice as much and construction projects at the recording speed.

Often called holy grail pure energy, a nuclear fusion creates four times as much Energy per kilogram of fuel than traditional nuclear division and four million times more than burning coal, without greenhouse gases and long -term radioactive waste. If everything goes according to the plan, it will be at least Market $ 1 trillion By 2050, according to ignition research.

There is only one big problem.

“The only fusion power plants in the universe are stars,” said Dennis White, Professor Nuclear Science and Technology at the Massachusette Institute.

The United States was the first to use the merger of the hydrogen bomb in 1952. In seven decades, scientists around the world have been fighting for the use of merger for electricity production.

The fusion reactions occur when the hydrogen atoms reach quite extreme temperature, which they merge together, forming a super heated gas called plasma. The mass is spilled during the process, theoretically, you can turn into a huge amount of energy, but it is difficult to control plasma. One of the popular methods uses powerful magnets to stop and control plasma in Tokamak, which is a donut metal device. Another uses high -energy lasers aimed at pellets size pepper, quickly squeezing and undermining it.

This is how the US pulled out the historical first fusion of ignition, producing pure positive energy at the National Lawrence Liverman, or NIF ignition, in 2022.

Since then, private investments in the Fusion US Fusion have increased to more than $ 8 billion, which is $ 1.2 billion in 2021, according to the Fusion Industry. With 40 companies -member FIA 25 of them are in the USA

Traditional nuclear energy created by division instead of merger, saw A large device in investment Because Big Tech is looking for ways to fill the permanently increasing needs for AI data centers. Amazon. Google and Meta signed a promise to help Triple nuclear energy Worldwide by 2050.

“If you care about AI when you care about the energy guide … You have to invest in Fusion,” said FIA CEO Andrew Holland. “This is what if the US is not leading, then China will be.”

While the US has the most active nuclear power plants, China – King of new projects.

Despite the fact that it crashed on the first reactor almost four decades after the United States first entered the technology, China is currently building much more power plants than any other country.

China has entered the merger Race in the early 2000s, approximately 50 years after the US, when it entered more than 30 countries to cooperate on international thermo experimental reactor fusion Megaproject In France. But Iter has since hit great delays.

The race goes between individual countries, but the US private sector remains among. Of the $ 8 billion of global private investments, $ 6 billion is in the US, FIA reports.

SODLETWEALTH FUSION SYSTEMS, Born with Mit, has Raised the most Money, nearly $ 2 billion from similar Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Google.

Washington Helion has raised $ 1 billion from investors such as Sam Altman and A ‘ a very ambitious deal since Microsoft to ensure the strength of the Fusion network by 2028. Tae Technologies He raised $ 1.2 billion.

“Anyone who has, in fact, a lot of boundless energy … can affect everything you think,” said Mila Bindbauer, CEO of Tae Technologies. “This is a terrible thought when it’s in the strangers.”

When it comes to state funding, China is ahead.

Beijing reports that $ 1.5 billion has been reported, and the US federal federal federal federal dollars were about $ 800 million annually in the last few years, according to Management Department of the Energy Department on Energy Sciences.

President Donald Trump got up Support for nuclearIncluding the merger, during its first term, and this continued with former President Joe Biden. It is unclear what the financing of the merger in the second term Trump will look like A mass federal reduction.

US senators and merger experts published report In February, he called $ 10 billion Federal funds to help avoid the US from loss.

But the United States may have already lost their advantage when it comes to reactor size. Usually, the greater the mark, the more effective the reactor can heat and limit the plasma, increasing the chances of pure energy.

A number of satellite images presented by the CNBC company Planet Labs shows a quick building in 2024 a new giant laser merger location in China. The maintenance dome in which the fusion reaction will occur is about twice as much as the NIF laser mergers, said Decker Evelet Corporation Corporation. The Chinese site is probably a hybrid fusion, said the Netherlands FIA.

“The hybrid of the division of division is essentially similar to the repetition of the bomb, but as a power plant. It will never work, never fly in a place like in the United States, where you have a regulation that determines security,” said Holland. “But in a mode as China, where it doesn’t matter what people who live nearby say when the government says we want to do it, we will do it.”

Was an existing national project tokamak, east, was Setting up the recordsfill out France The West project over the last couple of months for the longest plasma content inside the reactor, although it is less monumental milestone than pure positive energy.

Another huge Chinese project funded by the state achieve completion This year. A $ 700 million in the merger in eastern China will also appear a new sharp timer called Best, which is expected to be completed in 2027.

It seems Chinese ships follow American plan Posted by hundreds of scientists in 2020, said Holland.

“Congress did nothing to spend money to act,” he said. “We published this thing, and the Chinese then went and built.”

American launch Helion told CNBC, some Chinese projects also copy their patented designs.

“China, in particular, we see the investment of government agencies to invest in the company, then repeat the projects of US companies,” said David Kirtley, founder and CEO of Helion.

In the early 2000s, budget cuts Until internal merger, US universities have forced the US universities to stop working on new machines and sending researchers to find out about another country’s machines, including China.

“Instead of creating new ones, we went to China and helped them build their own, thinking,” Oh, it would be great. They will have an object. We will be very smart, “said Bob Mamgaard, co-founder and CEO of Fusion Systems.” Well, it was a big mistake. ”

Now there are more patents in China than in any other country, and 10 times higher than the number of doctoral sciences in science and technology, as the United States, according to data report from Nikkei asia.

“There is a limited labor pool in the West, for which all companies are fighting,” Bindbauer said. “This is a fundamental restriction.”

In addition to labor, the Fusion project requires a huge number of materials such as high -power magnets, certain metals, capacitors and semiconductors. Kirthli Helion said the last prototype of Polaris was set entirely due to the presence of semiconductors.

China makes steps into the corner supply chain for many of these materials, in a similar game with how it dominates sunny and EV batteries.

“China is ten times more rates that the US is in the development of materials,” Kirtley said. “This is what we have to change.”

The Shanghai company Fusion Company Energy Energy Engloity said CNBC in a statement that it was “undoubtedly” profitable from “an effective supply chain in China”. In June, energy unusual stated that she successfully created plasma in record, just two years after the start of her tokamak design.

It’s still far from reaching a network, a commercial merger force. Helion seeks to become the first for the purpose of 2028. The Commonwealth has announced a website in Virginia, where it plans to bring the first Fusion power plant on the Internet in the early 2030s.

“Although the first may be in the US, I don’t think we should calm down in this,” said the Whyte Mit. “The finish line is actually a mature merger industry that produces products for use worldwide, including at the AI ​​Center.”

See: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/14/china-catching-the-uclear-fusion-amid-power-demand.html