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The Big Questions Facing Nuclear Fusion Energy

Welcome to the 20th edition of the Cleaning Up newsletter.

The Cleaning Up Newsletter and Angus McCrone, Oct 13, 2026, https://cleaninguppod.substack.com/p/issue-20-the-big-questions-facing

Fusion energy is going through one of its periods of excitement. Entrepreneurs have received $14 billion of early-stage funding, and pioneers have heralded the first instances of projects producing more energy than was put in to sustain the plasma – yielding a positive ‘fusion energy gain factor’, or Q for short.

The AI boom has also fed enthusiasm: could fusion, the energy that drives the sun, one day power artificial intelligence data centres? And could AI itself do the complex problem-solving to accelerate the development of fusion as an economically viable energy source?

There are more hard-headed questions too, as raised in Cleaning Up’s 7 October episode, in which Michael Liebreich interviewed Sir Steven Cowley, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (see Show Snippets below).

One of these is the danger of excessive exuberance (that over-promising by the fusion sector might lead to investors and policy-makers losing faith). Another is about economics. Fusion reactors might be able to produce energy reliably within 10-20 years, but will fusion ever be competitive with alternatives such as zero-marginal-cost solar or wind power?

October 16, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology