Eindhoven University of Technology emphasises the need to align research with market and societal needs, adopting a value-led approach to secure a future for fusion energy in the global landscape.
Nuclear fusion has long been advertised as the ultimate clean energy source, but turning this promise into reality requires more than just scientific breakthroughs. Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is advocating a new approach to fusion development – one that is value-led, innovation-driven, and mindful of future deployment needs. This vision rethinks how we pursue fusion power to ensure that when fusion is ready, it will be relevant, competitive, and scalable in the global energy mix.
Fusion research is experiencing a renaissance. New fusion start-ups have attracted private investment, governments are ramping up support, and climate concerns add urgency to the quest for practical fusion power. Amid this excitement, in three recent papers, the scientists Ward and Lopes Cardozo, both linked to TU/e, caution that fusion will only fulfil its potential if we strategise wisely now. They emphasise three core principles to guide fusion’s success:
- Value-led R&D: Align fusion research with market and societal needs from the outset.
- Parallel innovation: Develop multiple concepts in parallel and shorten build times to speed up progress.
- Fuel supply chain: Plan for critical resources (like lithium-6 fuel) to avoid deployment bottlenecks.
Each principle tackles a different aspect of the challenge, and together they form a cohesive plan to bring fusion to fruition. By integrating these elements, TU/e’s value-led vision aims to deliver fusion energy faster and smarter. The following sections explore each theme and how they interconnect into a robust fusion strategy.
Rethinking fusion R&D: A value-led approach
For decades, fusion development followed a science-led path – long roadmaps aimed at a single prototype power plant. Traditionally, national programmes laid out rigid sequential roadmaps focused on physics milestones, with little regard for cost or competition. This linear approach, though scientifically rigorous, often ignores market changes and timing. The risk was that fusion could ‘arrive’ too late or in a form that struggles to compete with ever-cheaper alternatives. Ward and Lopes Cardozo argue that the science and technology basis is now so well developed that it’s time to switch to a value-led strategy to make fusion viable and relevant sooner. By taking the to-be-realised value for society, or simply the expected revenues, as the main metric, the focus shifts to acceleration, derisking and learning. Key elements of this strategy are therefore the shortening of the innovation cycle and maximisation of learning within one cycle.
Value-led R&D means focusing on the practical value each step brings. Instead of pursuing physics goals in isolation, it asks how a given experiment or design choice moves fusion closer to a market-ready product. Techno-economic considerations are embedded from the start. In practice, this means using metrics like expected cost per megawatt, time-to-deployment, and market relevance as part of every major decision – right alongside the physics. In short, fusion research must keep an eye on cost, efficiency, and end-use from the beginning, not just after achieving net power.
Practically, this approach requires several shifts:
- Diversify and prototype: Don’t bet everything on one design. Pursue a variety of small-scale fusion concepts in parallel (e.g. compact reactors to supply industrial heat). Smaller prototypes can be built faster, providing quick lessons and demonstrating tangible outputs.
- Target early value: Aim for high-value outputs that can be realised sooner. For instance, a fusion device that provides high-temperature heat for industry or hydrogen production could find a market more readily than one solely for electricity. By selling heat directly, early fusion plants can tap into existing industrial demand and sidestep some complexity.
- Accelerate development: Recognise that spending more early can shorten the path to success. A significantly boosted R&D effort now – running multiple projects in parallel – will shorten the timeline to a working reactor and reduce the chance that fusion becomes obsolete.
The energy landscape is changing rapidly. Solar and wind power have seen dramatic cost drops and massive deployment. By the 2030s, energy systems may favour flexible, low-cost solutions. A slow, high-cost fusion programme could easily be outpaced. The value-led approach aims to future-proof fusion by ensuring the technology we develop will be commercially relevant when it’s ready.
Interestingly, many private fusion startups are already leaning in this direction. To persuade investors, they promise faster progress and practical applications (some even plan to sell fusion heat to industry). They operate on tight timelines, aiming to show results in a decade, not a generation. The TU/e experts suggest public programmes should likewise become more agile and outcome-focused. By running fusion R&D with a clear eye on market needs and urgent timelines, we increase the odds that when fusion power is achieved, it is affordable, useful, and arrives on time.
Parallel innovation to accelerate progress
Even with a value-led mindset, fusion faces a fundamental challenge: time. Historically, each generation of fusion experiment or reactor took many years to build. Long build times and a one-at-a-time project mentality have slowed the pace of innovation. A 2024 TU/e study on energy technology cycles highlights that if fusion follows this slow trajectory, it won’t scale up fast enough to meet climate goals or future energy demand.
The key insight is that long build times delay learning. If it takes 15 years to construct a reactor, that’s 15 years before you know how it truly performs. Slow iteration hampers innovation and can even cause early technology lock-in – where the first design becomes the default simply because no alternatives were tested in time.
The solution is to embrace parallel innovation and shorter development cycles. Instead of one flagship project after another, the optimal path is to pursue multiple fusion concepts simultaneously. This has several advantages:
- Faster learning: With several designs tested at once, knowledge accumulates quickly. Lessons from different approaches inform each other, speeding up improvements.
- Spread risk, avoid lock-in: Diversifying concepts means that if one falters, others can still succeed. It also prevents the field from getting stuck on a single design too early.
- Continuous momentum: Parallel projects ensure there’s always progress on some front, which keeps funders and the public engaged and confident.
Critically, pursuing many concepts in parallel is only feasible if each is faster and cheaper to build than the colossal projects of the past. This favours reactor designs that are simpler, modular, or smaller in scale – ones that can be constructed in a few years rather than decades. A simple, compact fusion device that can be assembled and iterated rapidly offers a better learning curve than a one-off mega-experiment.
We’re already seeing movement in this direction. Globally, about five to ten distinct fusion approaches are being developed by companies and research teams – mirroring the ‘let many flowers bloom’ philosophy. While funding multiple efforts is expensive upfront, Lopes Cardozo and Ward argue it’s economically sound: the sooner fusion becomes viable, the larger its value to society, which translates into a greater monetary value.
Policymakers can encourage this by supporting a portfolio of fusion projects rather than betting on a single ‘winner.’ Funding several demonstrators or pilot plants increases the odds that at least one breakthrough solution emerges, and it fosters a healthy competition to innovate. This approach aligns with the value-led mindset because it’s all about accelerating fusion’s timeline and maximising the chance of success.
Parallel innovation, coupled with a value focus, can dramatically speed up fusion’s development. Ultimately, faster innovation now means a faster and more impactful fusion rollout when the technology is ready for the grid. However, there’s another piece to consider – ensuring that when fusion reactors are ready, we have the fuel and materials to deploy them widely.
Fuelling the future: The lithium-6 challenge
One often overlooked challenge of fusion power lies outside the reactor: the fuel supply chain. Most proposed fusion power plants will use the deuterium–tritium reaction, which means they need a steady supply of tritium. Tritium must be bred inside the reactor from lithium. In particular, the isotope lithium-6 absorbs neutrons to produce tritium. This means a future fusion industry will depend on having enough enriched lithium-6 for fuel – and the TU/e researchers Ward, Lopes Cardozo and Pearson, together with Scott (Uni Bristol, UK), warn that lithium-6 availability could become a major bottleneck if not addressed.
Today, lithium-6 is extremely scarce in usable quantities. Natural lithium contains only 7.5% Li-6 (the rest is Li-7), and separating Li-6 is technically challenging. The primary method used historically (a mercury-based chemical process from the Cold War era) was so toxic and inefficient that it was shut down and banned in the US. As a result, there is virtually no industrial production of lithium-6 at present. Small stockpiles exist, but not enough for even a handful of power plants.
The TU/e analysis in 2025 outlined why lithium enrichment is on the critical path for fusion:
- High demand per plant: Each fusion power plant may require several tons of enriched lithium-6 in its tritium breeding blankets to start up and operate.
- No current supply chain: Right now, there is essentially no capacity to produce lithium-6 at the scale a fusion industry would need. The only proven enrichment process (using mercury) is not viable for large-scale use. Without new enrichment technologies, a rapid build-out of fusion reactors would quickly hit a fuel supply wall.
- Need for action now: Solving this issue requires early investment in alternative lithium-6 enrichment methods and careful planning of the supply chain. Efforts are beginning – for example, research into laser-based separation and government calls for industry solutions – but much more work and coordination are needed to have a reliable Li-6 supply by the time fusion plants are ready.
Fusion could even afford a high price for lithium-6 (each kilogramme of Li-6 fuel yields enormous energy: 300 TJ, equivalent to the energy content in 10 million litres of gasoline), but that is doubtful if the material isn’t available. The concern is more about having enough supply in time than about the cost. On the bright side, lithium itself is abundant, and fusion’s overall lithium requirements would be relatively modest compared to, say, the battery industry. The challenge is purely in obtaining enough of the right isotope in time. The booming electric vehicle market, which drives lithium mining, could indirectly help by expanding the raw lithium supply – but it does nothing to solve the enrichment problem. That must be tackled head-on. A truly value-led fusion strategy treats fuel supply as a core part of development, ensuring that we don’t end up with working reactors that can’t be fuelled at scale.
The path forward
TU/e’s value-led vision for fusion energy marries cutting-edge science with strategic realism. By focusing on value, it keeps fusion development aligned with delivering a product that the world can actually use. Embracing parallel innovation brings urgency and efficiency to a field that needs to accelerate. And by planning for critical enablers like the fuel cycle, it safeguards fusion’s future viability.
This is a departure from the present ‘build it first, worry about the rest later’ mindset. Instead, the fusion effort must tackle scientific and practical challenges together. The payoff for this holistic approach is a fusion programme that can genuinely deliver on its promise.
As fusion ventures move from lab experiments to prototype power plants, the world is watching. Proving that fusion can work in practice – not just on paper – will be key to maintaining public support and investor confidence. TU/e researchers and their partners are outlining a pathway that maximises the probability of success. The coming decade will be pivotal, but with this strategy guiding the way, the fusion community has a game plan to finally turn its aspirations into reality.
References
- S.H. Ward, N.J. Lopes Cardozo, Value-led fusion technology: A framework for guiding fusion commercialisation strategy, Energy Policy 203 (2025) 114576, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114576
- Niek J. Lopes Cardozo and Samuel H. Ward, The interplay of the innovation cycle, build time, lifetime, and deployment rate of new energy technologies: a case study of nuclear fusion energy, Oxford Open Energy, 2024, 3, oiae005, https://doi.org/10.1093/ooenergy/oiae005
Science animation Explainer of this paper
- Samuel H. Ward, Richard J. Pearson, Thomas Scott and Niek J. Lopes Cardozo, Lithium enrichment threatens to curb fusion deployment, Joule 9, 101997, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2025.101997
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