Behemoth

These six firms, and 36 others  identified by the Fusion Industries Association (FIA), a trade body for this budding sector, are hoping to ride the green­ energy wave to a carbon-free future. They think they can succeed, where others failed, in taking fu­sion from the lab to the grid—and do so with machines far smaller and cheaper than the latest intergovernmental behe­moth, ITER, now being built in the south of France at a cost estimated by America’s en­ergy department to be $65bn. In some cas­es that optimism is based on the use of technologies and materials not available in the past; in others, on simpler designs.