Proxima Fusion, a private company, recently secured €400 million (£340 million; $460 million) from the state of Bavaria, while simultaneously bidding for over a billion dollars in additional funding from the German federal government. This substantial public investment is directed towards the development of the Alpha stellarator and the planned Stellaris fusion power plant, projects aimed at capturing the reaction that powers the Sun to produce electricity.
The company's co-founder and CEO, Francesco Sciortino, describes the Alpha stellarator as a "dumb machine" that is "objectively very difficult to design" and "objectively very difficult to build." However, Sciortino states that if successful, the device would be "just like a microwave oven," implying a future of simplified, mass-producible energy generation. The Alpha project is intended to generate more energy than it consumes, with lessons from its development informing the design of the more advanced Stellaris plant.
Fusion technology, which aims to fuse hydrogen nuclei to release energy, promises "abundant, cheap and emission-free electricity." Achieving this on Earth requires maintaining extremely high temperatures, far exceeding those found on the Sun, to heat a fuel of hydrogen isotopes into a burning hot plasma that must be controlled and manipulated to spark fusion.
The State's Role
Proxima Fusion, based in Munich, is pursuing a stellarator design, which utilizes magnets to manipulate plasma within a complex, twisted reaction container. This approach contrasts with the tokamak design, a doughnut-shaped device with simpler magnetic geometry. The significant public funding from the state of Bavaria and the pending federal government decision underscore the state's role in de-risking private capital investment in high-cost, long-term technological ventures.
Another project, UK-based Step (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production), also receives backing from the UK government. Step plans to construct a prototype power plant at a former coal-fired power station site in West Burton, Yorkshire. Ryan Ramsey, director of Organisational Performance at Step, notes that tokamaks possess "the advantage of a deep experimental foundation built over decades" and have "demonstrated plasma performance closer to what's required for a fusion power plant."
Ramsey further states that tokamaks benefit from "comparatively simpler magnetic geometry, with fewer and more regular coils," which has implications for "manufacturability, maintainability and cost." This focus on cost and manufacturability highlights the commercial imperative driving these projects, even within publicly funded frameworks.
Capital's Demands
Sciortino openly expresses concern, stating he "loses sleep" over Proxima's ability to build the intricately shaped magnets at a speed and cost that will render the stellarator an "economic proposition." He emphasizes the challenge: "The first magnet that we make will be very complicated and very expensive. But can we make it faster than people would expect, and can we drive down the cost?" This statement reveals the core capitalist drive for cost reduction and accelerated production to ensure profitability.
Proxima utilizes a highly expensive type of steel for its magnets, requiring machining to a high level of accuracy. Sciortino stresses the crucial need for maintaining high precision while simultaneously increasing the pace of development. He aims to make Alpha operational in one-third of the time it took for Germany's W7-X stellarator to become operational, which was over a decade.
Labor's Value
The company's aggressive production timeline includes testing a prototype magnetic coil next year, followed by the construction of 40 more coils for Alpha. To achieve this, a magnet factory is in its early stages of construction, with Sciortino stating, "In, 2028, 2029 we need to be able to make magnets at a crazy, crazy speed." This demand for "crazy, crazy speed" directly translates into intensified labor requirements.
Sciortino identifies Germany's manufacturing expertise and its large pool of skilled labor as a critical asset. He estimates Germany has 550,000 CNC machinists, compared to 350,000 in the entire United States. He notes that while Europe "missed the digital wave," it still possesses "people being trained in manufacturing," framing the working class as a resource for capital accumulation. This reliance on a specialized workforce underscores the human labor necessary to meet the demands of private capital, even as the state provides the initial investment to propel these ventures forward.
Ramsey confirms the commercial shift in the industry, stating that "the fusion industry is well beyond a physics experiment now" and that there is "real momentum across fusion." He concludes that the central question is not which concept is most interesting, but "which can credibly deliver a power plant," signaling the transition from scientific inquiry to market delivery and the pursuit of profit.