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The US led on nuclear fusion for decades. Now China is in position to win the race
US companies are worried they’re losing their lead in mastering this near-limitless form of energy, as new fusion companies sprout across China, and Beijing outspends DC.
In the early 1950s, the US military tested a series of nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean that were “boosted” by gases that created a fusion reaction, resulting in an explosion 700 times the power of Hiroshima blast. In late 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California shot nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn, in the world’s first successful experiment to generate a net gain of fusion energy. China’s EAST tokamak in Hefei held plasma stable at 70 million degrees Celsius — five times hotter than the core of the sun — for more than 17 minutes, a world record and an objectively astonishing breakthrough.
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