It’s Eric Lander A major scientific heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he directs the International Human Genome Project and is the founding director of the powerful Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. His numerous honors include a MacArthur “genius” grant and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he selected Lander as his science adviser and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander lost his job amid allegations that he harassed subordinates, but went on to head a nonprofit organization called Science for America.
So what is he doing running a Silicon Valley startup that aims to solve the climate crisis by realizing the long-held dream of clean fusion power? Lander is the founding CEO of the recently announced Pacific Fusion, leading a team that includes top scientists from the national nuclear laboratories—Lawrence Livermore and Sandia—as well as simulation and operations experts. It joins several dozen companies chasing a fusion dream that always seems 10 or 20 years away. And it still is – Pacific Fusion says it won’t deliver a working commercial fusion plant until 2030. But this time there is a clear path to success. Or so says the famous executive.
In May 2023 Science for America issued a report that notes progress in fusion, citing recent breakthroughs. The previous year, a group from Livermore achieved what is known as a “target gain,” producing significantly more energy than the amount needed to run the experiment. Soon after the paper was published, Lander quietly formed a company with some scientists in the field, including some who worked in the labs and others from places like 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 available—and why Pacific Fusion may have the best chance to make it happen. He begins by giving me an example of fusion, which occurs when hydrogen is, in his words, “squished” into helium, releasing massive amounts of energy. It occurs naturally in the sun and other stars, but humans have not yet figured out how to make it efficiently here on Earth. But the potential payoff—unlimited clean power—has spurred about 50 startups to chase that dragon. Billionaires including Sam Altman and Bill Gates have backed one or another of these startups. Every few months, it seems, one of these contenders announces some kind of breakthrough.
Why do Pacific Fusion say it’s different? The method he is pursuing is called pulsed magnetic fusion, which involves placing small containers of deuterium-tritium fuel in a chamber and blasting large electrical pulses through them to magnetically squeeze the fuel containers and achieve fusion. (It’s all explained here in an article.) “It’s a very attractive approach that’s kind of been around for decades as an idea, but only became feasible in the last two years because of this work at the national labs,” Lander says. 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 figure out how to use this technique to generate the much more energy needed to build and management of this system. The remaining challenges – tough ones to be sure – lie in the engineering.
Another challenge is getting money to build prototypes for hundreds of commercial plants that will theoretically solve the world’s energy problems. (And maybe it will cause a global meltdown when the current providers are toppled, but that’s another story.) How is a moonshot funded? Even when the investor accepts the risk, the payoff prospect is remote: Pacific Fusion’s schedule should have a full-scale demonstration system sometime in the early 2030s. and commercial systems later in the decade.
