An aggressive push to advance fusion from university experiments into energy for the real world.
A new group aims to tap experts in the Midwest and beyond to capture the momentum of fusion energy and accelerate development and commercialization of this rapidly advancing technology.
Coordinated through Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based 5 Lakes Institute, the Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance unites businesses, leading university researchers, and government partners to accelerate commercialization, expand the workforce, grow the supply chain, and make fusion more economically viable and sustainable as a global center of excellence.
Fusion energy, the process that powers the sun and stars, is a long-sought-after way to produce limitless clean and safe energy—one that could put electricity on the grid as early as the 2030s. Much progress is being made on the remaining technical barriers to achieving widespread power generation with fusion energy.
With experts in plasma and fusion science in multiple departments across the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Science, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the alliance’s founding university partner. The university is one of the world’s top-ranked fusion energy research universities. Two alliance organizing member companies, Realta Fusion and SHINE Technologies, as well as a third fusion company, Type One Energy, already have spun out of UW-Madison research.
These examples show UW-Madison is at the forefront of forming technology leaders out of its research and innovation, says Oliver Schmitz, the Thomas and Suzanne Werner Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics and College of Engineering associate dean for research innovation. “The emerging fusion industry complex is connected to state-of-the-art research institutions like ours through public-private partnerships,” he says. “The Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance gives this a broad platform to advance and build a second-to-none space for a world leading fusion industry ecosystem.”
The global race to commercialize the technology could create a market projected to be worth trillions by 2050. “[This] powerful group of forward-leaning companies and university researchers will form an engineering core to drive the region’s fusion energy economy in coming years,” says John Byrnes, Chairman of 5 Lakes Institute.
The alliance also plans to build a world-class fusion energy engineering consortium in the Great Lakes region.
In addition to Realta and SHINE, other organizing members of the Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance include:
- Tokamak Energy—Based in Oxford, England, Tokamak Energy is developing and deploying fusion energy technology with a focus on compact spherical tokamaks and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets.
- Fusion Fuel Cycles (FFC)—Based in Ontario, Canada, FFC is a joint venture between Kyoto Fusioneering and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories that develops the enabling fuel cycle technologies that make fusion energy systems safe, efficient and commercially viable. It will bring the world’s first commercially relevant tritium fuel cycle test facility online in 2026.
- Strohwig Industries—Based in Richfield, Wisconsin, Strohwig is a contract manufacturer specializing in engineering, machining and assembly services for industries like aerospace, defense and energy.
- Paragon D&E—Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Paragon is an advanced manufacturer specializing in design and build capabilities for tooling, particularly for industries like aerospace, defense, nuclear and heavy truck.
The alliance is exactly the kind of cross-sector effort that helps bridge lab innovation to grid-scale reality, says Ian Castillo, co-CEO of FFC. “Early collaboration like this will underpin the partnerships needed to build the durable supply chains and knowledge networks fusion will rely on as it moves toward deployment,” he says.
The Great Lakes region’s robust, flexible grid, deep pipeline of skilled trades and engineering talent, and decades of experience operating large-scale energy facilities make it uniquely suited to integrate fusion into real-world systems. Its supply chains, built through generations of leadership in the automotive, nuclear and aerospace sectors, offer the resilience, technical specialization and tritium fuel handling expertise needed to scale fusion technologies globally.
“The region led the development of the massive automobile manufacturing industry in the 20th century,” says Kieran Furlong, CEO of Realta Fusion. “We can use that deep manufacturing heritage to lead the massive manufacturing industry of the 21st century: fusion energy power plants.”
Currently focused on adding capacity, the alliance will be inviting additional stakeholders—research institutions, manufacturers, technology developers, policymakers and community leaders—to join its effort to build the Great Lakes region’s capacity to contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable future powered by fusion energy.
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