Eric Lander is a Big Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project and is the founder and director of the powerful Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His numerous awards include a MacArthur “genius” grant and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he brought in Lander as his science adviser and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander lost the job amid allegations that he bullied subordinates, but went on to lead a nonprofit organization called Science for America.
So what does he do about running a Silicon Valley startup that aims to solve the climate crisis by realizing the long-held dream of clean fusion energy? Lander is the founder and CEO of the recently announced Pacific Fusion and leads a team that includes top scientists from the nation's nuclear laboratories – Lawrence Livermore and Sandia – and experts in simulation and operations. It joins several dozen companies pursuing a merger dream that always seems to be 10 to 20 years down the road. And that's still true: Pacific Fusion says it won't deliver a working commercial fusion power plant until well into 2030. But this time there is a clear path to success. So says the famous CEO.
In May 2023, Science for America released a report highlighting progress in nuclear fusion, citing recent breakthroughs. The year before, a Livermore group achieved what is known as “target gain,” producing significantly more energy than the amount needed to perform the experiment. Shortly after the article's publication, Lander quietly formed a company with some scientists in the field, including some who worked in the labs and others from the likes of Alphabet's X division and Tesla.
Sitting in a conference room at Pacific Fusion's headquarters in Fremont, California, Lander explains to me why commercial fusion is finally within reach – and why Pacific Fusion may have the best chance to make it happen. He begins with an introduction to fusion, which happens when hydrogen is, in his words, “squeezed” into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy. It occurs naturally on the sun and other stars, but humans have yet to figure out how to do it efficiently here on Earth. But the potential payoff – unlimited clean energy – has about fifty startups chasing this dragon. Billionaires including Sam Altman and Bill Gates have backed one of these startups. It seems like every few months one of those contenders announces a breakthrough.
Why does Pacific Fusion say it's different? The method it pursues is called pulsed magnetic fusion, which involves placing small containers of deuterium-tritium fuel in a chamber and blowing large electrical pulses through them to magnetically compress the fuel containers and induce fusion. (It's all explained in an article here.) “It's a very attractive approach that has been around as an idea for decades, but has only become feasible in the last two years thanks to this work in the national labs,” says Lander. His claim, which I will hear repeatedly as I meet with his team, is that we have now made all the scientific breakthroughs we need to understand how we can use this technique to generate much more of the energy needed to run this system. build and run. The remaining challenges – certainly difficult ones – lie in the field of technology.
Another challenge is getting the money to build the prototypes for the hundreds of commercial factories that will theoretically solve the world's energy problems. (And perhaps cause global disruption if current suppliers are upended, but that's another story.) How do you finance a moonshot? Even if an investor accepts the risk, the prospect of profit is remote: the Pacific Fusion timeline projects a large-scale demonstration system sometime in the early 2030s, with commercial systems later in the decade.
