{"id":386040,"date":"2026-07-04T13:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T13:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/386040\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T13:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T13:22:09","slug":"san-diegos-general-atomics-gets-20m-to-advance-fusion-energy-in-california-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/386040\/","title":{"rendered":"San Diego\u2019s General Atomics gets $20M to advance fusion energy in California \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nuclear fusion needs blankets, so to speak, and scientists, engineers and workers at General Atomics<\/a> are poised to create a big place to test them out.<\/p>\n

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, General Atomics scientists and engineers will design and build a \u201cfusion blanket component\u201d test facility in Poway in the hopes the site can further the goal of developing nuclear fusion power plants that can produce a practically unlimited and clean source of electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cA blanket test facility would represent the next stage in turning scientific discovery into sustainable power,\u201d Wayne Solomon, vice president of Magnetic Fusion Energy<\/a> at General Atomics, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Integrated fusion blanket systems use specialized lithium-based materials \u2014 solid, liquid or salt \u2014 that line the inside of a fusion vessel to capture energy and produce the tritium needed to sustain fusion reactions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called a blanket, General Atomics director of Fusion Energy Technologies Brian Grierson<\/a> said, \u201cbecause it wraps all the way around the fusion core \u2014 and it\u2019s nice and warm.\u201d<\/p>\n

How it works<\/p>\n

Engineers plan to use the facility to confirm that circulating blanket fluids can effectively remove heat, withstand mechanical stress and extract fuel at the levels needed for power plants.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a challenge \u201cthat no one has ever been sufficiently compelled, or driven, to bring to this scale,\u201d Grierson said during an interview with the Union-Tribune. \u201cThis would be a facility to test engineering components that would then be bolted onto a fusion device to generate electricity and fusion fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n

General Atomics plans to have the facility commissioned in three to five years.<\/p>\n

The project got a big financial boost a little more than one week ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom announced General Atomics will receive a $20 million tax credit<\/a> through the Governor\u2019s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GO-Biz.<\/p>\n

The award will be applied to the blanket test facility, which is part of a public-private partnership that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, UC San Diego and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not just for the benefit\u201d of General Atomics, Grierson said. \u201cIt\u2019s a project we have with multiple organizations, universities, national labs and private industry \u2026 They are potentially considering relocating and setting up brick-and-mortar to add to the local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why fusion excites people<\/p>\n

Fusion is not to be confused with fission \u2014 the process used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants such as the now-shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.<\/p>\n

Unlike fission reactors that split atoms, nuclear fusion merges light atomic nuclei, which releases massive amounts of energy. Fusion is the same process that powers the sun. Hoped-for fusion reactors would leave behind no long-lived radioactive waste.<\/p>\n

Fusion\u2019s promoters say a technological breakthrough resulting in the construction of commercial fusion reactors would transform the energy sector \u2014 especially with global energy demand growing \u2014 by offering a virtually boundless supply of power that emits no greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

But finding ways to harness its vast capabilities has taken decades, and fusion has its share of skeptics.<\/p>\n

Fusion technology developed the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s, but as an energy source, fusion power has been generated only for very short periods in the laboratory<\/a> and no commercial reactors exist. (There\u2019s a long-running joke in the energy industry that commercial fusion is always 30 years away<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What happens next<\/p>\n

The blanket test facility will be designed and developed on General Atomics\u2019 Poway campus, home of the company\u2019s Magnet Technologies Center.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where six modules were put together to form a colossal magnet called the \u201ccentral solenoid\u201d at the center of the ITER project in France<\/a> \u2014 a vast, international effort to help determine the viability of commercial fusion.\u00a0The last of the Magnet Technologies Center\u2019s modules were shipped to ITER last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The magnet center in Poway intends to be refurbished to house the blanket test facility, with the idea that the existing infrastructure and engineering know-how will help accelerate the project\u2019s timeline and save money.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the equipment that is there is perfect for running a blanket test facility because it will have a large super-conducting magnet,\u201d Grierson said, adding that standing up an entirely new facility \u201cwould take twice as long, if not longer, and it would be a much larger investment\u201d compared to using the Poway site.<\/p>\n

\"OneOne of the chambers at the Magnet Technologies Center at the General Atomics Poway campus that was used to test the Central Solenoid, the largest pulsed superconducting magnet in the world. The magnet center plans to be refurbished for the Fusion Blanket Component Test Facility. (General Atomics)<\/p>\n

California, in general, and San Diego in particular, are fast becoming hubs for a lot of nuclear fusion development.<\/p>\n

General Atomics established the first fusion research program in the U.S. in 1957.<\/p>\n

And the Torrey Pines campus at General Atomics is home to the DIII-D National Fusion Facility<\/a> that the company operates on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Science<\/a>.\u00a0Pronounced \u201cdee-three-dee,\u201d DIII-D boasts North America\u2019s largest operating tokamak<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber that is surrounded by powerful electromagnets.<\/p>\n

San Diego also hosts the Fusion Data Science and Digital Engineering Center<\/a>, a collaboration of scientists and engineers at General Atomics and UC San Diego to use advanced digital engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing to fast-track fusion development.<\/p>\n

Up in Northern California,\u00a0scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0made headlines in late 2022 when 192 high-powered lasers created \u201cnet energy\u201d through a nuclear fusion reaction. It marked the first time that a fusion experiment resulted in a greater amount of energy coming out than the amount put in. General Atomics assisted in the Livermore experiment.<\/p>\n

The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation last fall released<\/a> an interactive\u00a0 \u201croad map\u201d<\/a> that said fusion research and development has the potential to support more than 40,000 jobs and inject as much as $125 billion into California\u2019s economy in the next decade. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Private companies in the U.S. and Europe are also pursuing the \u201choly grail\u201d of developing a working fusion power plant that can generate electricity.<\/p>\n

China has jumped into contention, with one report estimating the Chinese government is pouring as much as $3 billion a year<\/a> into fusion efforts, reminiscent of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n

Grierson of General Atomics has spent the better part of 20 years in fusion research. The 46-year-old believes the dream will become a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s not a matter of years, I think it\u2019s a matter of resources,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s how many dollars away is it, not how many years away is it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nuclear fusion needs blankets, so to speak, and scientists, engineers and workers at General Atomics are poised to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,6774,643,181,100,74,76,75,645,1970,1696],"class_list":["post-386040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-business","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-science","tag-technology","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}