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Migrants storm a barbed-wire fence as they attempt to cross the land border with Spain's African enclave of Ceuta near Fnideq in northern Morocco on September 15, 2024. (Getty Images)
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Engineers work outside the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, on September 25, 2009. (Getty Images)
The United States’ highest national security priority is deterring major-power conflict with nuclear-armed adversaries. Investing in inertial confinement fusion is crucial to counter China, which is rapidly building fusion facilities and high-energy-density physics infrastructure to develop its arsenal.
Join Hudson Institute’s Keystone Defense Initiative for a discussion of “Inertial Confinement Fusion Is Key to America’s Nuclear Deterrent,” a new policy memo authored by Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs, Former Principal Deputy Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration Madelyn Creedon and Special Competitive Studies Project Adviser Abigail Remler.
Dr. Rebeccah L. Heinrichs and Hon. Madelyn Creedon will join Dr. Mark Herrmann, associate director for weapon physics and design at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Dr. Keith LeChien, founder and chief technology officer of Pacific Fusion, to discuss the memo’s key takeaways and policy implications.
Event Highlights
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
- The United States’ highest national security priority, our highest one, because if everything’s a priority, then nothing is a priority, is deterring major power conflict with nuclear-armed adversaries. In 2023, the Bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission, on which I had the privilege of serving under the chairmanship of Madelyn and the late Senator John Kyl, was our ranking chair. And… what an enormous privilege it was to have Senator Kyl with us as his really last big project in service of this country, because with the two of them at the helm, I think we really delivered a product that continues to do great good for the United States and our allies, and so we were very fortunate to have him at the time.
- China has invested roughly $10 billion in new laser and pulse power inertial confinement fusion projects. At the center is the China Academy of Engineering Physics, a PLA administered nuclear weapons lab, which is recruiting thousands of scientists and engineers into its ICF programs. China is building five large ICF facilities, three under construction, two in advanced planning.
Madelyn Creedon
- And so the whole point of the article and today is to really discuss this continuing need, not only for the evolution of the scientific achievements that are part of the stockpile stewardship program, as we transition from a period of no longer having to just sustain the stockpile, but also the lessons learned from stockpile stewardship that will allow us to do the things that we’re going to need in the future to meet the threats that Rebeccah described as we turn the corner and actually start to put new nuclear weapons in the stockpile. Stockpile stewardship and the NIF and the other capabilities have really prepared the US now to take this next step, which we need to do as the stockpile ages out.
Keith LeChien
- Pacific Fusion did break ground on our high-yield facility in August last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is a facility designed to achieve a hundred megajoules of fusion yield. That’s more energy out than is stored in the capacitors to create it. So that’s also an interesting milestone for energy, getting more energy out than went in, that’s never been done. We’ve now broken ground on this, but 100 percent of that investment to date has been through private equity funding on our part. We’ve raised over a billion dollars and that’s allowed us to get to this point in terms of building the facility. We’ve also established mass manufacturing facilities. If we’re going to be first a high yield fusion by the end of this decade, we have to have technologies that can be mass manufactured and we’ve stood up those facilities and capabilities. Madelyn mentioned that we last month signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Nuclear Security Administration that lays out the way that private industry, it was specific to us, but in general, how private industry can partner with the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Laboratories on high yield fusion.
- Not only has China broken ground on some very large and impressive laser facilities, just this month actually, it’s broken ground on large pulse power capabilities capable of achieving high yield as well. This has just been this month. We’re seeing fusion technology and national news being shipped across the countryside in China, being built and mass manufactured in one location and being shipped across the countryside to be instituted in these facilities. And they’ve just published very interesting journal articles on how they’ll actually build these large facilities to win in high yield fusion. We have to get there first and that means converting all of this amazing support and momentum into programs that are funded at the right level to actually win.
Mark Herrmann
- But the long-term goal for the program has always been to get to high fusion yield. And so, the exciting opportunity from the private sector engaging in this is they’re doing a lot of the work that if we had more money in the NNSA, we would be doing. If we had more money, we would have . . . As many of the ideas that led the foundation of Pacific Fusion and other companies were ideas that were studied at the NNSA and they built on them and made them better and all that stuff, just like we expect the private sector to do, but they have additional resources they’re bringing to this whole conversation. And so that is a great opportunity for all of us. It’s an opportunity for the energy future that they’re pursuing, but also an opportunity in the defense space where they can do work and buy down risk, and we can work together so that we’re kind of getting closer to that high-yield goal. And so, I do think it’s a super exciting time. And we have good partnerships today with Pacific Fusion, many other companies. And we’re working hand in glove with them to try and make sure that we help, to the extent we can, help them succeed so that we can lay that foundation and help the United States be the first to get to these ambitious goals.
- And when you run into a problem with production where you can’t make it exactly the same way as you made it in the 1980s or you can’t use the same materials or you can’t do any of those things, how do you answer the question of what do you do? And so those scientific tools are essential to that. And so, the science is not a nice to have that we do on the side or because we used to be in a stewardship era. I don’t think we’re in a stewardship era anymore. I don’t think that’s the right description for what we’re doing.
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