Kyoto Fusioneering anchors U.S. headquarters in Oak Ridge with $46.9M fusion investment
The move ties the Japan-founded company to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the two will build UNITY-3, a U.S. DOE-backed facility meant to prove out a piece of hardware every future fusion plant is counting on.
Kyoto Fusioneering, a Japan-founded developer of fusion power technology, will move its U.S. headquarters to Oak Ridge, a decision the state says will bring 51 jobs and a $46.9 million investment to Anderson County. The announcement comes just one week after the area’s annual Nuclear Opportunities Workshop, hosted by the East Tennessee Economic Council.
The relocation ties Kyoto Fusioneering’s future to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where the company and the lab will build UNITY-3, a test facility the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has committed to fund.
For East Tennessee, it is the latest addition to a nuclear and fusion cluster that has been building fast.
What is Kyoto Fusioneering building?
Founded in Japan in 2019, Kyoto Fusioneering supplies core hardware to fusion programs around the world; including plasma heating systems, breeding blankets and tritium fuel-cycle equipment. UNITY-3 extends that production work to Oak Ridge. The facility is designed to test how reactor components capture energy from fusion neutrons and produce an isotope called tritium. This process is called a “breeding blanket.”
It’s critically important beacsue fusion reactors burn the hydrogen isotope tritium as fuel.
Every single deuterium-tritium fusion plant on the drawing board assumes a breeding blanket that works; however, no one has proven one under real fusion conditions.
UNITY-3 is built to close that gap.
ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer described UNITY-3 as shared infrastructure the broader fusion field will depend on, pairing the company’s systems expertise with the lab’s strengths in neutron science, materials and computing.
It will generate high-energy neutrons at 14 megaelectronvolts (MeV), which is comparable to conditions inside a burning plasma. This will allow researchers to test commercial blanket designs and check the computer models used to predict how much fuel a reactor can make.
Building on Fusion Momentum
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Deputy Governor and Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Stuart C. McWhorter said in an annoucnement that Kyoto Fusioneering will also receive a grant from the state’s Nuclear Energy Fund.
Days earlier, at the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop, ORNL licensed decades-old pellet-fueling technology to Type One Energy, which also recieved funding from the Nuclear Energy Fund. The Knoxville-area company building its Infinity One prototype stellarator at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bull Run site in Clinton, with construction set to begin in November.
In less than a week, the two announcements point out the growing fusion capabilities in East Tennessee.
“We came to Oak Ridge because nowhere else brings together the fusion nuclear science and computing this challenge demands,” said Bibake Uppal, president of Kyoto Fusioneering America.
Learn more about this partnership from ORNL.
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