Posted on 01/07/2026 3:58:10 AM PST by Libloather
Weeks after the Trump Media and Technology Group announced a merger with nuclear power company TAE Technologies, the new organization has unveiled plans for a fusion plant in the US — aiming to make it the biggest power generation site in the world.
On Tuesday morning, the company unveiled criteria for selecting the building site of the new project. CEO Devin Nunes tells me they are accepting applications from state and local governments — much like Amazon HQ did — and will make a decision within weeks, with construction to begin later this year.
And Nunes is clear about one thing: “We’re only going to be building this in a red state.”
This would be the first of its kind commercial fusion electric plant in the US and would, Nunes, notes enable America to compete with nations like China that have access to almost unlimited energy.
“This is a long-term solution,” Nunes said.
Application requirements include a minimum of 20 acres to house multiple fusion reactors, as well abillity to distribute energy on a grid, proximity to a metropolitan area with talent and support from local and state government, as well as the ability to maintain a security presence.
“The TMTG team is actively holding discussions with multiple states and entities about potential sites as we look forward to completing this merger,” Nunes said in a statement. “These are the initial steps to spark a renaissance in American energy to secure safe, clean, abundant, and affordable fusion power that will lower Americans’ energy bills and guarantee America’s predominant position in the A.I. revolution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Really. I’ve built gas plants with a larger footprint.
The 20 acres is just where the reactors will be. Many more surrounding acres will be needed for everything else.
Hmmm........ the Tennessee Valley Authority is already at work building a fusion generation site at the former Bull Run Steam Plant site.
The TVA is teamed up with Oak Ridge National Laboratories that is located just down the road.
There must be some breakthrough we have not been told about
> Although Fusion energy isn’t a reality yet,<
And the atomic bomb wasn’t possible until it was; and the SR-71 Blackbird wasn’t possible until it was; and …
You are correct that it isn’t a reality yet. Publicly it isn’t but I wouldn’t doubt that secretly it is quite a reality.
EC
Red State Texas is kicking butts and taking names with our dominance of wind energy. At night wholesale West Texas power is near zero or negative due to wind being so plentiful. If you have a VPP you can access those single cent per kWh prices used to be Gridy as a RPP for $9.95 per month would broker wholesale for retail consumers but due to winter storm Uri $9000 per megawatt hour pricing cap the backlash of allowing retail power to be directly priced at the market rate some people who didn’t limit their consumption had $9 per kWh bills. Hey if you gamble in the market you pay the market call price it’s like any other commodity market there is risks know them.
The numbers speak for themselves, no emotions needed it’s cold hard math.
https://x.com/bpiatt/status/1882928783742931412
https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1964565400785736028
Wind is the second cheapest wholesale energy, it routinely is $10 or under solar at mid day sun is also under $10 on the regular. Every megawatt hour of either is 8,000,000-10,000,000 BTU of natural gas that one doesn’t have to be purchased at $4.35 MMBTU that means for every megawatt hour of wind or solar you don’t have to buy $43.50 worth of gas for a turbine to burn. It should be clear why gas turbines set the market at $50 per megawatt hour minimum to turn a profit. The 2026 Henry Hub gas prices are $4.35 at the hub that’s not piped and delivered to a power plant. Wind and solar cab both turn profits in the $10 per megawatt hour price range this is why Texas is the North American leader in both solar and wind we have huge deserts to our West and the high Plains are winds as FK.
Read up on the difference between fission and fusion. Fusion needs very little space to provide enormous power
There is no radiation with Fusion
” I must be uninformed. Fusion ?”
IMHO this is a well-intentioned scam. ITER has been under development for 20 years, 10 years away from first plasma. There are so many problems, e.g. when they say 10 times as much power created than input, I think they are not counting the power required for the magnetic confinement. They compare the power used to heat the plasma to the heat generated by the fusion. Also it is a deuterium-tritium fusion, and tritium has to be created in a fission reactor, and there is only a small amount of tritium in the world. It occurs in seawater but the extraction is supposedly near impossible. there are other fuel combinations not using tritium but those combinatinos have never been used in an actual power-producing reactor. ITER is supposed to run for a limited time, like 10 minutes, then months to ramp it up again. Your grandkids may get a benefit but I’d ballpark another 50 years. Devin Nunes is way over his head and being scammed by the fusion knuckleheads.
Pretty sure most fusion designs are deuterium only. Deuterium -tritium isn’t practical; you have to produce tritium from lithium in a nuclear reactor. We can barely produce enough tritium to keep our “boosted-fission primary” nuclear weapons operational.
No, the deuterium-deuterium fusion reaction produces Helium-3 and a very high-energy neutron, which proceeds to make whatever it hits radioactive.
“There is no radiation with Fusion”
Depends on the type of fusion.
Deuterium - Tritium fusion is mostly 14 MEV neutrons as it’s reaction product it’s fiercely radioactive.
Deuterium - Deuterium fusion has a 50/50 output mix
D+D= He3 + 2.45MEV neutron
D+D= Tritium + Proton
So half the radioactivity of D-T
The plasma conditions to do D-D automatically mean D-T is going to happen as D-T plasma conditions are easier to meet. So in a D-D plasma that 50% T output will be consumed and D-T fusion and lots and lots of 14MEV neutrons come flying out as radioactivity.
He3 fusion from the other 50% is harder to light off vs D-D so you could harvest the He3 and use it in another higher temp plasma reactor as fuel. This is the route Helion Energy is going they will use a D-D plasma breeder reactor to make the He3 fuel for their power reactor.
“D-He-3 fusion requires the highest temperatures, about 200 M°C, which does pose an engineering challenge due to the need for stronger magnets and putting more energy into the system. However, both challenges can be addressed through designing better magnets or more efficient circuits. This reaction produces a 3.6 MeV alpha and a 14.7 MeV proton. However, with a D-He-3 mixture, D-D reactions can still occur, resulting in five possible outputs: 3.6 MeV alphas, 0.8 MeV helions, 14.7 MeV protons, 1 MeV tritons, and 2.45 MeV neutrons.”
https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/explaining-helions-fusion-fuel-choice-d-he-3/
Of course you could do catalyzed D-D fusion if you have 200 Million C temps in your plasma you get D-D,D-T,D-He3 all at once and the highest energy per unit of fuel mass of any nuclear fuel plus you only need deuterium as input fuel you are breeding the tritium and helium 3 in situ. You still get lots of 2.45 & 14 MEV neutrons but you just surround your plasma reactor with a light water tank which will capture the neutrons by moderation with light hydrogen to thermal neutron energy levels then capture by light hydrogen atoms which turns them into....yup more deuterium you can breed deuterium with what would have been wasted neutrons it also heats that water to boiling temps via the kinetic energy of those neutrons.
Course you could also wrap a natural uranium blanket around your plasma reactor and use those high every neutrons to induce fast fission in said uranium multiplying your energy out out by a factor of 50-200 having a thermal spectrum natural uranium blanket outside the fast blanket breeds thousands of kilos of plutonium 239 per year a 1 gigawatt fast blanket driven by a 100 megawatt fusion plasma would breed 4000+ kilograms of Pu per year. The Pu is the product forget about the 1 gigawatt of fission energy each gram of Pu239 has 83.6 gigajoules or 277 kilowatt hours worth and you are breeding 4+ metric tonnes per year of it.
You don’t even need to break even with your fusion plasma even at Q=0.5 you would need to feed a 100MW plasma 200megawatts of energy with a fast blanket being driven at 100 fission energy half of the theoretical max you have a gigawatt thermal to harvest and return the 200MW electric to the plasma drivers. The product again is the 4000+ kilograms of plutonium the thermal spectrum breeder blanket is churning out to fuel a fleet of integral fast reactors each one of those also making 30% more plutonium than it burns per fueling cycle. Or burn the Pu in CANDU type heavy water reactors can burn Pu at a CR of 0.8 and 20,000 megawatt days per tonne of heavy metal where only 0.9% of that mass needs to be Pu.or 9 kilograms Pu per tonne of CANDU fuel. A single fusion fission breeder would make 444.4 tonnes of said fuel per year at 20,000MWd / Thm that’s 8,888,888 megawatt days thermal worth of fuel. At 30% CANDU to electrons that’s 2,666,666.6 MWd electric.
That is enough fuel for eight CANDU 900 reactors to run flat out 24/7 for a year.
This is why fusion fission breeding makes so much sense, 200 megawatts worth of plasma power fuels 7+ gigawatts worth of electric reactors all while needing no new mining of uranium the existing depleted uranium stockpiles will last for 10,000 years if we breed plutonium from them.
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Heavy water reactors produce copious amounts of tritium due to captures by deuterium in the heavy water. Canada has a surplus of tritium because their CANDU fleet makes it by the hundreds of kilos per year.
Any D-T fusion plasma is going to either be liquid lithium cooled or have a liquid blanket surrounding the plasma as both Li6 and at high energy 14+ MEV levels Li7 both breed tritium from neutron captures or elastic neutron cascade in Li7 that yields tritium plus a lower energy neutron the Li7 reaction is why the first dry thermonuclear weapon yield was vastly more than expected more than double at Castle Bravo. This will for sure be used in any D-T fusion plasma device it’s literally called the tritium bonus.
Tritium breakeven for a lithium cooled fusion reactor is virtually guaranteed due to this bonus effect the question is do you want to deal with 14 MEV neutrons activating everything they touch including your magnets, first plasma walls , coils ,injectors the works it all will be radioactive once you turn the plasma on.
This is why every commercial fusion group is trying for neutron free or really neutron limited fusion plasmas less neutrons less radioactivity.
No, TAE Technologies’ (TAE) “advanced” fusion process using hydrogen-boron (p-B11) aims to produce virtually no long-lived radioactive waste or neutron radiation, relying instead on charged particles (alpha particles) as byproducts, making it inherently cleaner and safer than traditional fusion research (D-T) or fission. Their unique approach uses abundant, non-radioactive fuels and produces helium as a byproduct, avoiding the significant radioactive waste associated with other methods.
Do we really have blue states, or just big blue cities that override the red counties?
Agreed!
Fusion is going to be awhile.
B-H fusion is probably the best fit but ignition point might be out of possibility.
D-T is the easiest, but Tritium is a major issue even with a Lithium blanket.
Agreed!
Fusion is going to be awhile.
B-H fusion is probably the best fit but ignition point might be out of possibility.
D-T is the easiest, but Tritium is a major issue even with a Lithium blanket.
There have to be steam turbines and probably cooling towers and switch yards though. Fission reactors also don’t take much space but the rest of the kit does. When it comes to an industrial facility 20 acres is not much space at all but maybe that is enough though I doubt it.
“Weeks after the Trump Media and Technology Group announced a merger with nuclear power company TAE Technologies, the new organization has unveiled plans for a fusion plant in the US”
IT’S A TRAP!!! This is a massive welfare project for TAE Technologies. We don’t need any more Solyndra boondoggles.
Go to TAE’s website
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