The AI Boom Needs More Power. Could Nuclear Fusion Be the Answer?

Fusion Energy is back in the spotlight as AI data centers drive demand for more electricity. And one energy company just hit a major milestone in the race to make fusion a viable energy source. Joining us now to talk about all of this and more is Greg Twyce, CEO of General Fusion, Inc. Thank you so much for being here, Greg. Thanks, Justine. Great to be back on the show. Yeah, of course. So happy to have you back here, especially because you just achieved a major milestone in raising plasma temperature. So tell us all about this achievement and also put it into perspective for us. Why is this so important to be happening right now? Sure. Yeah. Well, I guess the last time we spoke, we'd had another first. We'd just become the first publicly traded company and joining the NASDAQ. And now here we are again talking about another first for us at General Fusion and for the world, really. Yeah. Earlier this month, using our unique sort of practical slow compression approach to creating fusion conditions, we achieved a world first milestone, the slow compression. The approach that we take allows us to build power plants, ultimately, from fusion. And so as we achieve milestones that are scientific in this way, it's a big deal for us and for the industry. And so earlier this month, the milestone that I'm talking about is one of temperatures. We achieved temperatures in a machine that are close to those that are inside the sun, over 12 million degrees Celsius. Hot temperatures necessary for fusion. Yeah, it just seems like an incredible milestone. Again, those temperatures so hot and so necessary to make this technology that people have been working on for quite some time actually become a viable reality for people to be using here. There are some other fusion companies out there doing some similar things, trying to get to the same goal. What makes General Fusion's approach so different from these other companies, especially with these latest developments? Yeah, so I agree. Yeah, there's a lot going into fusion these days. There is a global race happening. You know, the opportunity for fusion to sort of transform how the world is energized and the financial opportunity associated with doing that is massive. And so there is a race going on. And for us, we've been at this for two decades and we kind of took a different approach to this, you know, with the majority of the industry being born out of national labs and academia and kind of translating these big science machines into fusion results. And then maybe one day trying to figure out how to turn that into a power plant. It's an idea and a concept. We started at the other end and we said, we want to build power plants. That's our goal from the beginning. And if we wanted to build a power plant, what would that need to look like? What sort of obstacles would we need to overcome? Not just creating the fusion conditions, of course that's hard, but doing it in a way that can be practical, that can be viable long-term, economical, and connect to the grid. Okay, start with that as a constraint, and then start proving it as a science in that way. And that's the difference for us. Starting with a power plant design, achieve the milestones with the constraints, those constraints wrapped around it. For us, achieving a milestone in the way that we do it, this slow compression is going to allow us to translate those results ultimately into power plants on the grid all around the world and with our first of a kind aimed at 2035. Yeah, I mean, looking at those goals and again, what you've achieved so far, you're really talking about this kind of more practical path to commercial power. So talk to us a little bit about how this could really make it more cost effective to build and operate than maybe what we're seeing elsewhere. Yeah. So in all fusion approaches, you're trying to recreate the conditions of the sun inside of the machine on demand. And a lot of the time, historically, that's been done using extreme, you know, at the extreme ends of physics, you know, using superconducting magnets, lasers. And these are kind of, I would consider, exotic ways to create fusion conditions, which are great for science achievements. And, um, a great way to sort of demonstrate that fusion is possible and that's happened. What we've done is said, okay, we want to be able to create those conditions, but we have to be able to do it in a way that can be, you know, scaled up practically in power plants all over the world. And so we take Take, um... a different approach. We don't operate at the extremes of the physics. We often operate more in the sweet spot, in the middle. And what we do and how we do that is really important. We take Mechanical means of creating these fusion conditions that are very similar to a diesel engine. Think of the fuel going into a chamber and being compressed to increase temperatures and densities and get combustion in a diesel engine. Similarly, we're doing that in our machine, where we take our fuel, which is deuterium and tritium, which is isotopes of hydrogen, and we compress those. We use a liquid metal wall to do it. And what that allows us to do is create fusion conditions in a way that can be useful and put on the grid and not using superconducting magnets, not using lasers, using a lot of existing materials means practical, economical, long-term viable. And that's the constraint we wrap around the team and everything we do. So really exciting time for practical commercial fusion this month. Yeah, it really is. And in thinking about being able to achieve this goal that you have so far, this milestone, obviously you still have quite a ways to go until you get to that 2035 benchmark that you're trying to get to with opening that power plant. Talk to us a little bit about the challenges that you'll face, not only what's next in terms of fusion and getting to the next place that you need to for the scientific process, but also just for actually getting a power plant like this operational. What are some of those challenges you're going to be working towards the next few years Yeah, so the machine that we just achieved this result in is one that we're going to continue to upgrade and achieve even greater temperatures. Thank you. The milestone that we hit, 12 million degrees, is in and around something that's called 1 keV. We aim to hit 10 keV, which is the type of temperatures we need in a fusion power plant of ours. And we are upgrading the machine today and over the next several weeks to be able to aim our sights on that next technical milestone using this machine and that'll be an even bigger deal for us in the industry and so we'll work towards that and then and then go a little bit further to get to what's called break-even condition and those are the conditions inside the machine where you would get you know an equal amount of energy out or more than it took to create them in the first place and that has been achieved in a national lab in California before. Our goal is to achieve that in a way that can be put on a power plant. And so for the next couple of years, we'll be very focused on that. Following that, and it's somewhat in parallel, we're going to be working on the systems required to do that on a repeated basis. All the systems that would ultimately go into a first of a kind and all of our power plants on the grid. It's a program that we call the Commercial Systems Program, and we're working on things like pistons and valves and seals that can recreate those conditions repetitively, build power plants that last 40 years, and do it economically. And so we'll be working on those. And then outside of the technology space, there's a lot of commercial interest in what we're doing. You can think about the demand for electricity, demand for power, just almost insatiable. And so a lot of parties that we are engaged with and new ones we're working with to make sure that when we come to market, we're doing it in a way that those customers, those power generators can actually work with us. And so that's a big part. Third leg of the stool would be regulation. Fusion is a safe technology, not because we've designed safety into it, but because fusion is inherently safe. You know, you don't have long-lived radioactive waste. You're not working with fuels that can be weaponized. There's no run-on or runaway characteristics of a fusion reaction. And so what all that means is it's very, very safe and it can be a much larger market, but regulations need to regulate it appropriately. So we're working with governments around the world to ensure that the regulations. Yeah, I mean, just thinking about all of these things you're mentioning here, this is such a big undertaking, very exciting time, but also just a lot of work there. And thinking about General Fusion, as you mentioned, just becoming a publicly traded company on NASDAQ this year, how does that access to public market capital really change your ability to develop the technology that you need to develop and then all of these other processes that you're also working on at the same time? Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, we are a company of many firsts. One of the first companies to be, you know, sort of incorporated in Fusion and then, you know, achieving some first milestones that we just talked about. And then, you know, a few months previously being first to be publicly list. And the reason for that was because we are ready to execute on some really, really important milestones. And we thought that being a public company would give us the platform. The access to a whole new set of investors that haven't been able to invest in Fusion before and execute those milestones in the public market and bring a whole new group of investors along with us and really lay out the foundation for what we believe to be a long-term, really, really strong investment profile for investors that want to invest in the future of energy. And so... For us, it's going to be key that we continue to hit the milestones that we're hitting that will drive value for us, de-risk our long-term goals for power plants on the grid starting in 2035 with our folks. Well, again, congratulations on all of these milestones so far. We definitely look forward to following the company as you work towards that 2035 goal and seeing all of the other milestones that you've hit along the way. Thank you so much, Greg Twenny, CEO of General Fusion, Inc. Really appreciate your time today. As always, thanks, Justine.