MIT researchers have developed an open-access framework to assess whether nuclear fusion power plants can operate profitably, MIT reported. The study, titled "Criteria for the economic viability of fusion power plants," appeared online in the Journal of Fusion Energy to provide an analytical model for the fusion industry.
Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering at MIT, co-authored the paper alongside Andrew W. Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Additional co-authors include Rachel Bielajew, Maria Hancock, Riley Moeykens, and Guinevere Shaw from Rutherford Energy Ventures and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Ten parameters for plant economics
The framework sets out 10 parameters to evaluate power plant viability, spanning scientific inputs, engineering factors, and financial returns. The approach draws inspiration from the 1950s Lawson Criterion, which defines "plasma Q" as the ratio of fusion power generated to the external power required to sustain the plasma. The authors created a corresponding "economic Q," defined as the ratio of capital gained to capital expended. A project must achieve an economic Q greater than 1 to be commercially viable.
The parameters assess plant construction costs, power density, conversion efficiency from fusion power to an economic product, and the durability of energy conversion components. Whyte stated that the framework applies across different reactor sizes and remains agnostic to specific fusion technologies, whether plasma is confined using magnets or initiated through lasers.
Industry investment and scale
The paper follows a period of increased private funding and experimental progress across the fusion sector. In 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, recorded a reaction with net positive energy gain. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff co-founded by Whyte, closed a $1 billion funding round and plans to build an operational plant in Virginia during the 2030s.
Whyte and Lo also co-founded the consultancy Rutherford Energy Ventures, which works with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to establish a fusion research consortium. Whyte, who previously led MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and its Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was appointed CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
Lo noted that early commercial plants will face challenging development decisions before lowering expenses through cumulative deployment. Lo compared the process to human genome sequencing, which became one million times cheaper over roughly 25 years. At MIT Sloan, Lo is launching CATAPULT, an educational program designed to train researchers to translate scientific advances into commercial products.
