Fusion developer Inertia Enterprises on Tuesday forged new partnerships with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the latest sign that the Department of Energy is joining forces with energy startup companies.
Nuclear fusion has long been seen as a far-off utopian solution to meeting the world’s growing energy needs, with enormous energy density and minimal radioactive waste. Private money flowing into fusion includes support from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
But the technological precision required to sustain the fusion reactions has proven illusive, and many still doubt whether the concept will ever prove commercially viable.
Launched last summer with the aim of commercializing fusion power, Inertia is an infant in a young field of private developers. In February, it secured $450 million from investors that include Google. The company wants to build on a 2022 experiment carried out by Lawrence Livermore that for the first time produced more energy from fusion than was put into the process.
