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Tennessee Valley Authority, the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a nuclear fusion startup are aiming to develop a nuclear fusion power plant in the next decade (POLITICO Pro, subscription).  
 
The project: TVA, the largest public power provider in the U.S., last week entered into a cooperative agreement with the Knoxville, Tennessee–based Type One Energy “to develop and commercialize fusion technology.”

• The agreement is part of a larger ‘Project Infinity’ established last year. It includes TVA, Type One Energy and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
• The first phase of work tested Type One’s fusion prototype, Infinity One, at the shuttered Bull Run coal plant in Clinton, Tennessee.   

What it will do: The new phase of the project “includes exploring a potential Infinity Two, a 350-megawatt commercial fusion plant that would power the equivalent of roughly 315,000 homes.” 

• In December, Dominion Energy and Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced plans “to build the world’s first commercial fusion plant ‘in the early 2030s.’”  

Why it’s important: Nuclear fusion—which generates electricity “by replicating the process that powers the sun”—could produce four times as much energy per kilogram of fuel as nuclear fission, the process used by current nuclear reactors. 
 
However … “[W]hile scientists have produced fusion energy for brief periods of time on multiple occasions, they’ve yet to create a long-term sustainable power generator.” 

• Still, progress is being made. In recent years, scientists have twice achieved a net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction, the basis for generating electric power.   

The NAM’s view: “The public–private partnership between TVA and Type One is good news for U.S. energy security,” said NAM Director of Energy and Resources Policy Michael Davin. “Nuclear is a crucial part of the all-of-the-above approach the U.S. needs to claim in order to become truly energy dominant on the global stage.”