Trade war jeopardizes China's fusion energy drive

AllAfrica

17-04-2025

As the US and China exchange trade war salvos, concerns are rising that the decoupling could soon extend to the two sides' fruitful fusion energy cooperation.
In April, Trump imposed a 145% tariff on Chinese goods and ordered a probe into whether American firms are overly reliant on China's semiconductors, medical equipment and critical metals. He also tightened export control rules to prevent China from obtaining Nvidia's and AMD's graphic processing units for artificial intelligence development.
Despite all this, the US has remained one of the seven contributors to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which was established in southern France in 2007. A handheld plasma device made in China. Photo: Asia Times / Jeff Pao
The ITER currently provides the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) with industry standards and contracts, while French firms, including Framatome, offer China fusion technologies.
'At the moment, China is really doubling down on expanding their efforts,' Tone Langengen, a senior policy advisor for climate and energy policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said in a panel discussion at the Fusion Fest event organized by The Economist in London on April 14.
'This could become another example like the solar or electric vehicle industry, where we basically just let one country run ahead, and we end up situating the whole supply chain and all the power that comes with it in a single country. I think this dynamic could be even more significant with fusion than it was with solar,' she said.
'China has been sending people out, taking back a lot of information, and using their ability to provide a lot of finance to work very effectively and drive through barriers we set for ourselves around regulation and planning.
'It is important now for other countries to wake up to the fact that there is a real geopolitical race underway. That's not just about the technology itself. It could have significant implications for the future power and geopolitics. This is the moment for the rest of us to increase collaboration.'
China joined ITER in 2003 with its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) as a testbed for ITER technologies. A Tokamak is a donut-shaped vessel designed to confine a superheated plasma using magnetic fields.
Adopting a so-called 'whole-of-nation' approach, China has significantly boosted its investment in fusion energy since 2022 as the previous Biden administration curbed the country's access to the chips, AI and quantum computing sectors.
Last year, the US invested about US$1.35 billion in the fusion sector while China poured in about $1.3 billion, according to the Fusion Energy Base, an industry website. As of 2024, the US has invested $5.63 billion in the sector, compared to China's $2.49 billion. They were followed by Canada ($321 million) and the United Kingdom ($200 million).
In January 2025, the EAST reactor successfully maintained a steady-state, high-confinement plasma for 1,066 seconds. In February, France's WEST (Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), formerly known as Tore Supra, achieved a record-breaking 1,337 seconds. Laban Coblentz, head of communications of ITER. Photo: Asia Times /Jeff Pao
'As an American, I want my country to win the [fusion energy] race. But ultimately, we are all going to build plants globally,' said Laban Coblentz, head of communications of ITER. 'As much as we have been bashing China, what I would really like to see people doing is emulating China.
'China is actively constructing 26 [nuclear plants] with another 22 in the pipeline. They are building it on schedule with a strong safety program. How did they do that? I had no idea.'
On a recent trip to Beijing, Coblentz discovered that China embedded about 140 French companies in its supply chain to construct its Hualong Two, a third-generation pressurized water nuclear fission reactor.
'I know some of my friends go to the US Congress and say: If we don't go faster, China is going to win the war on fusion. That's fine,' he said. 'But if there is this reputation: China steals other people's intellectual property, [we should] learn from what they are doing. They're doing some really smart things. And fusion is going to need to replicate some of those things intelligently if we want this to be the generational change for our kids.
'The Hualong Two and the Hualong One look a lot like a European pressurized water reactor, but [are] largely indigenous. So rather than worry about China stealing or any of that, steal back! Imitation is a very good thing to look at how they are doing and what they're doing well, and emulate that.'
In addition to getting resources from ITER and French companies, China has also built a local talent pool by sending students to the US to study fusion technologies. Jin Zhang, an assistant professor in Microwave Electronics, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London. Photo: Asia Times /Jeff Pao
'In China, we've got many PhD students, and we've got scientists coming back from the USA to China to work on fusion energy projects in Energy Singularity in Shanghai,' Jin Zhang, an assistant professor in Microwave Electronics, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, told Asia Times in an interview.
'They have built the first high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tokamak in the world. Things are developing really fast in China.'
Zhang, linked to the EAST project in Hefei, said if the US forbids Chinese students to study there, China's fusion energy development progress will slow and be negatively impacted. He hopes the US won't move to curb China's fusion energy sector, as any technological breakthroughs in China will benefit the whole world.
'Fusion is a shared goal for all humanity. The more we collaborate with each other, the sooner that will happen,' he added.
In 1986, the European Union (Euratom), Japan, the Soviet Union and the US agreed to jointly pursue the design for a large international fusion facility, ITER. Conceptual design work began in 1988 and the final design was approved by the members in 2001.
Construction of the ITER reactor started in 2013 with an initial budget of 6 billion euros ($6.84 billion). In 2021, ITER said the total cost of the reactor would be about 22 billion euros.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) estimated that the overall cost of ITER would reach $65 billion by 2039, when the facility can achieve a fusion reaction involving deuterium-tritium fuel. The DOE said the US contributed $2.9 billion to ITER between 2007 and 2023, mainly in research, hardware design and manufacturing for 12 ITER systems.
The European Union will contribute 45.6% of ITER's total costs, while the remaining six member countries (China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US) will each contribute 9.1%.
Read: China aims for world's first fusion-fission reactor by 2031
Read: China's Jiangxi to build a fusion-fission reactor