Can You Invest in Nuclear Fusion Energy?

U.S. scientists announced on Tuesday an exciting breakthrough in nuclear fusion technology, sparking worldwide interest in investing in the sector.

The news came from researchers at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who told the world they have achieved a "net energy gain," for the first time, in a fusion experiment using lasers.

The breaking of the net energy gain barrier essentially means that the reaction produces more energy than what is required to put in, marking a huge achievement in the field.

"Based on the rumors so far, the...announcement is likely something along the lines of net gain, and this represents a major milestone in the science and engineering journey we've been on for decades," Nathan Garland, a lecturer in applied mathematics and physics at Australia's Griffith University, told Newsweek.

"People have been working since the '50s on this, and the headline goal has been this Q greater than 1—or net energy gain barrier. Something like the four-minute mile or the Wright brothers' first controlled flight," he said.

Georg Harrer, an atomic and plasma physics researcher at Vienna's University of Technology, told Newsweek, "The breakthrough...announced today comes from inertial confinement or laser fusion where a deuterium/tritium pellet is placed in a chamber and fired upon with a very powerful laser."

Nuclear fusion involves heavy hydrogen atoms—deuterium and tritium—colliding with enough force that they fuse to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy in the process. Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites," the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusion reactions themselves producing enough energy to maintain the reaction without external input.

Ignition essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, a necessary condition for fusion to be used as a functional source of electricity. Ignition was achieved for the first time in 2021—also by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—for a very short period.

Nuclear fusion energy is a burgeoning industry, and with every milestone hit, more and more people hope that it may be the future of energy. This has created a huge amount of interest in investing money in the development of nuclear energy, in the hopes of a large return if the technology succeeds.

About 33 companies are involved in nuclear fusion research, according to Forbes, but none of these are publicly funded, meaning that individuals cannot just buy a share of their stock online. Privately funded nuclear fusion research gained around $2.8 billion in investments from figures including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos last year, according to the Fusion Industry Association, bringing total investments to nearly $5 billion.

The company with the most investments is TAE Technologies, which received nearly $1 billion on its own, and one successful new company is Helion Energy, which gained $500 million. Across the sector, private investment into fusion energy has now overtaken government funding, according to Forbes.

For an investor without accreditation, it is difficult to invest directly in a single company that is not yet publicly traded, said Medium writer "Colin," a "Former Chief Quant at SBI," in a blog post. To be an accredited investor, you need to be very rich, with a single income over $200,000 or a net worth of over $1 million outside of property. Accredited investors can then buy shares using marketplaces like EquityZen and Forge.

For nonaccredited investors, options may develop in the future fuel supply and engineering supply chain for fusion reactions.

Nuclear fusion requires hydrogen as fuel, in its deuterium and tritium forms, meaning that the hydrogen atoms have one neutron and two neutrons, respectively. Companies that are publicly traded and involved in the production of these hydrogen forms may be invested in by individuals as well as companies involved in developing other forms of fuel to be used in the fusion process, like lithium.

Additionally, the nuclear fusion reactors will require constant upkeep and maintenance, so new parts will be frequently needed. Companies that manufacture these parts may also be an investment option. However, some ethical issues could arise here, as those companies are often involved in building parts for weapons and military drones.

If nuclear fusion is harnessed fully, it could completely change the energy sector. Requiring only hydrogen as fuel and releasing only helium as waste, the fusion would reduce the need for polluting and climate-changing fossil fuels. With record temperatures and severe storms battering the U.S. and other countries—and oil leaks like the Keystone Pipeline polluting fresh water and harming wildlife—a shift away from fossil fuels is critical.

While the announcement may represent a significant milestone in the nuclear fusion research field, there is still a lot of work to do to get the technology to the point where it can be used to power cities.

"This represents an incredible scientific achievement and rightly one for the history books," Garland said. "That being said, we're still a little while off practical fusion energy rolling out to the grid. The main challenge for us at this stage is to keep pushing along the path of improving how we heat up, pressurize and contain the hot, dense plasmas that nurture the fusion reactions to happen."

He continued: "As we build better magnets, bigger lasers, stronger materials to withstand the immense temperatures and energies required to contain these fusion plasmas—think trying to bottle the core of our sun—we'll get closer to our eventual goal of generating enough energy out of the fusion reactions that we can harness it into a source suitable for powering our electricity grid."

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