The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected to lead three research collaborations with fusion industry partners as part of the 2025 cohort of the Innovation Network for FUSion Energy program, or INFUSE. The awarded projects will tap ORNL's deep expertise in fusion materials, plasma diagnostics and advanced modeling and simulation to solve practical challenges and create new technologies to accelerate the development of fusion energy.
Established in 2019, the INFUSE program promotes public-private research partnerships with the fusion industry. The program leverages the unique capabilities and scientific talent at DOE's national laboratories and U.S. universities to address barriers in advancing fusion energy technology. The partner laboratories or universities are awarded between $100,000 and $500,000 for one- or two-year projects, with at least a 20% cost share required from the private company.
Per the official announcement by DOE , more than $6.1 million in funding has been awarded to 20 projects exploring materials science, laser technology, superconducting magnets, AI learning for fusion modeling and simulation, and enabling technologies to move toward achieving economical fusion energy.
"The INFUSE awards demonstrate the key role that national laboratories like ORNL play in moving fusion energy research forward and strengthening U.S. leadership in fusion energy," said Troy Carter, director of ORNL's Fusion Energy Division, or FED. "Partnerships like these allow us to apply our knowledge and the tools at our disposal to directly support the needs of the growing fusion industry."
ORNL's INFUSE collaborations are:
- Mechanical characterization of neutron irradiated tungsten, led by Xiang "Frank" Chen of ORNL's Materials Science and Technology Division, with Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts.
The ARC fusion power plant is the planned successor device to SPARC, a commercially relevant experimental tokamak currently under construction by Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Plasma-facing components in ARC will need to withstand extreme heat and bombardment from neutrons and other particles that can alter the mechanical properties of exposed materials. This project will analyze samples of tungsten, the prime material candidate for ARC components, which have previously been irradiated in ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor. ORNL and Commonwealth will test the tungsten and tungsten alloy samples to see if radiation damage affects the transition temperature at which the material goes from brittle to ductile. This property is a key part of the reactor component design, and by using already irradiated samples from ORNL, Commonwealth will be able to skip a years-long irradiation campaign and accelerate the data-gathering and development process for ARC.
- Leveraging ORNL advanced spectroscopy for fast-ion confinement studies on WHAM, led by Keisuke Fujii of the lab's Fusion Energy Division, with Realta Fusion in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror experiment, or WHAM, is a magnetic mirror fusion system sponsored by Realta Fusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WHAM generated its first plasma in July 2024, but exhibited relatively short confinement times. To address this issue and better predict device performance, Realta is developing and validating computational models of plasma particle behavior to be incorporated into the RealTwin™ platform, which creates a digital twin capable of simulating the entire device. ORNL will contribute critical diagnostics to measure the neutral particle and fast-ion density across the plasma to verify the models and guide strategies to reduce energy losses. This combination of state-of-the-art experimental facilities with ORNL's diagnostics expertise will help improve the performance and reliability of the RealTwin platform and lay the foundation for Realta's next-step mirror device, Anvil, to bring fusion energy closer to commercial viability.
- Simulating thermal and momentum impact of inertial fusion neutrons on chamber jet dynamics, led by Arpan Sircar of ORNL's Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division, with Xcimer Energy in Colorado.
Xcimer Energy's approach to delivering fusion energy is similar to the experimental National Ignition Facility located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but Xcimer's device utilizes a high-energy laser to ignite a much larger fuel pellet in a special chamber known as HYLIFE-III. This chamber uses jets of a lithium molten salt called FLiBe as a coolant, tritium breeding medium and radiation shield to protect the chamber. The intense micro explosions generated by the capsule transfer both heat and momentum from the expelled neutrons to the fluid jets, which can affect their performance and impact the chamber's shielding. For this project, ORNL will adapt the Fusion Energy Reactor Models Integrator, or FERMI, to simulate the neutron-fluid interactions. FERMI is a high-fidelity, multiphysics simulation framework that was originally developed to model the neutronics, computational fluid dynamics and structural mechanics of magnetic fusion reactors. If successful, FERMI will help Xcimer improve its design by providing insights into how well the chamber is shielded and how quickly it can be reset after each shot.
"Interest in INFUSE continues to grow in both the public and private sectors, with another record number of applicants this year," said ORNL's Arnie Lumsdaine, Private-Public Partnerships lead and INFUSE director. "The growth in funding for the program also indicates the program as a DOE priority. We are looking forward to seeing successful results from this year's projects."
The INFUSE program is sponsored by the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences within DOE's Office of Science and is managed by ORNL and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
The other projects from this year's awards can be found on the INFUSE website .
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . - Sean Simoneau
