Eric Lander is a Massive Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project and is the founding director of the powerful Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. His countless honors include a MacArthur “genius” fellowship and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he named Lander his science adviser and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander lost his job because of the allegations against him he abused his subordinatesbut later headed 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 spotless fusion energy? Lander is the founder and CEO of the newly announced company Pacific Fusionleading a team that includes leading scientists from the national nuclear laboratories – Lawrence Livermore and Sandia – as well as experts in simulation and operations. It joins dozens of companies pursuing the merger dream, which always seems out of date 10 or 20 years from now. And that’s still the case – Pacific Fusion says it won’t launch an operational commercial fusion power plant until sometime after the 2030s. But this time the path to success is clear. At least that’s what its celebrated CEO says.
In May 2023 Science for America issued a report which indicated progress in thermonuclear fusion, citing recent breakthroughs. A year earlier Livermore group reached the so-called “target gain”, producing much more energy than the amount required to conduct the experiment. Shortly after the article was published, Lander quietly formed a partnership with several scientists in the field, including some who worked in labs and others from places like Alphabet’s Division X and Tesla.
Sitting in a conference room at Pacific Fusion’s headquarters in Fremont, California, Lander explains to me why a commercial merger is finally within reach and why Pacific Fusion may have the best chance of making it happen. He begins by introducing me to nuclear fusion, which occurs when hydrogen, in his words, “squeezes” 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 effectively here on Earth. But the potential benefit – unlimited spotless energy – has led about 50 startups to chase this dragon. Billionaires including Sam Altman and Bill Gates have backed one or the other of these startups. It seems like every few months there’s one of these contenders announces Some breach.
Why does Pacific Fusion claim otherwise? The method he uses is called pulsed magnetic fusion, and it involves placing petite containers of deuterium-tritium fuel in a chamber and sending enormous electrical pulses through them to magnetically compress the fuel containers and achieve fusion. (Everything is explained here in paper.) “This is a very attractive approach that has been around for decades but has only become feasible in the last two years thanks to work in national laboratories,” says Lander. His claim, which I will repeat repeatedly in meetings with his team, is that we have already made all the scientific breakthroughs we need to understand how to utilize this technique to generate far more energy than is needed to build and run this system. The remaining challenges – certainly tough ones – lie in engineering.
The next challenge is to obtain money to build prototypes for hundreds of commercial power plants that will theoretically solve the world’s energy problems. (And it could cause global disruption as incumbent providers are turned upside down, but that’s another story.) How do you finance a Moonshot? Even if an investor accepts the risk, the prospect of return is remote: Pacific Fusion is on schedule to have a full-scale demonstration system in the early 2030s, with commercial systems later in the decade.