Can Fusion Energy Win the Race Against Doubt?
Phillipe Larochelle challenges the disbelief surrounding fusion power and calls for action before China takes the lead
Despite recent scientific breakthroughs, global skepticism continues to loom over nuclear fusion. Phillipe Larochelle, partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), sees this disbelief not as incidental, but as the biggest obstacle to making fusion power a reality.
“We often confront various different audiences with what I call the frontiers of skepticism when it comes to fusion,” Larochelle said in a compelling talk in London. “These are various reasons at various levels of education and information that people think it either can't work or don't want to invest in it.”
Those “frontiers” range from the perception that fusion is physically impossible to the fear that, even if it does succeed, it will be unaffordable, irrelevant, or outpaced by China’s centralized efforts. The fundamental challenge, Larochelle argues, is not scientific, but psychological and financial. Fusion believers must prove that it works, that it matters, and most importantly, that it can compete.
Larochelle doesn’t waste time debating whether fusion can exist.
“Fusion is not impossible,” he said. “In fact, all of the other energy sources would be impossible without fusion.”
To demonstrate this visually, he pulled out a handheld toroidal plasma device—a miniaturized example of the forces at play in commercial-scale fusion systems.
A handheld toroidal plasma device Photo: Jeff Pao“This is a donut of spinning plasma that only takes about 60 watts,” he explained. “The way that this works is very similar to a tokamak.”
Tokamaks are torus-shaped devices that use magnetic fields to confine plasma, the most studied approach to achieving controlled fusion on Earth.
His point? “Plasmas really aren’t that complicated.” And with a note of irony, he added: “You too can order one, but unfortunately, right now, you have to order it from China. And guess what? Unless we all work really hard, you’re going to have to order the big one from China too.”
Who Is Phillipe Larochelle?
As a funder at BEV—an investment firm launched by Bill Gates to back transformative energy technologies—Phillipe Larochelle isn’t just advocating from the sidelines. He’s shaping the future of fusion through capital and influence.
Among the firm’s 120 energy investments, five are dedicated to fusion. These include Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and Type One Energy, both working on magnetic confinement; Xcimer Energy, a laser-based concept; and two Z-pinch companies: Zap Energy and Pacific Fusion.
Larochelle’s role at BEV is to help these companies bridge the gap between promising science and commercial products. His remarks came during Fusion Fest, a summit hosted by The Economist on April 8, 2025, in London. Unlike many academic conferences, this event focused squarely on the business, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of fusion’s next leap forward.
“Doing fusion on Earth is not hard. We did fusion before we did fission—early 1930s versus late 1930s,” Larochelle said. “The hard part is to get to energy-positive fusion.”
Energy-positive—or net energy—fusion means generating more energy than it takes to start and sustain the reaction. This is the holy grail of fusion energy, and the most achievable method currently involves deuterium–tritium (DT) fusion. This reaction fuses a deuterium nucleus (found in seawater) with a tritium nucleus (bred from lithium), producing a helium atom, a neutron, and 17.6 million electron volts of energy.
Larochelle hailed the recent success at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s National Ignition Facility, where lasers achieved net energy gain.
“One of the concepts, lasers, has actually gotten across the finish line. Thank you, Livermore,” he said.
But moving from experiments to grid-ready power plants is still a heavy lift. “You have to breed and manage the tritium, deal with neutron damage, design for remote maintenance, and handle heat loads,” he explained. “But now, we have peer-reviewed solutions to each of these problems.”
The Cost and the Competition
Even as fusion’s physics advances, the conversation is shifting to its price tag and rivals.
“More and more it’s no longer ‘Can fusion work?’ but now the big frontier is: OK, maybe it’ll work, but is it going to be cost effective?” Larochelle asked.
His case for affordability starts with the fuel. “DT fusion—one gram of that gives you about 94,000 kilowatt hours,” he said. “Even at current prices, the fuel cost is a total rounding error.”
Instead, the actual cost driver will be the reactor's materials, manufacturing, and maintenance. Early estimates from BEV and its partners suggest that fusion may become more materials-efficient than wind, solar, coal, or even fission, especially when accounting for the capacity factor (the percent of time a plant runs at full power).
“This is mainly a manufacturing and maintenance challenge,” Larochelle said. “And how do you lower the cost of manufacturing and maintenance? You do it on a scale. And the great news there is that fusion is the most scalable thing in the universe.”
Crucially, the regulatory burden that drove up costs in nuclear fission may not apply to fusion. “In the United States… fusion will not be regulated like fission,” he said, noting recent legislative and policy changes that could speed approval and slash compliance costs.
With these dynamics in place, BEV estimates that fusion power could eventually fall below five cents per kilowatt hour, on par or better than fossil fuels and renewables.
Yet none of this will matter if another country gets there first.
“There are headlines from last year,” Larochelle said. “The UK Government has put in 10 million pounds for an investment fund in fusion. That’s great. At almost the same time, the city of Shanghai put 1.4 billion into a fusion fund.”
That billion-dollar Chinese commitment is part of a much larger fusion push centered on a vast new complex: the Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT) in Hefei, Anhui Province. Spanning 40 hectares, CRAFT will support the development of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), which aims to demonstrate a working fusion power plant.
“CRAFT is now CFS’s biggest competition to breaking even,” Larochelle warned. “They’re no longer playing JV now. They’re intercollegiate.”
What sets China apart is not just the money, but the coordination. The state-backed initiative—led by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC)—unites 25 state-owned enterprises, four top universities, and a network of private firms into a single, streamlined fusion strategy.
By contrast, Western efforts remain fragmented and underfunded. Larochelle asked the crowd to consider the implications: “Can Western companies compete with the Chinese government and industry without Western government support? Maybe… but that seems pretty risky.”
Instead, he pointed to the U.S. space program as a model. “SpaceX flew over 80% of payloads by mass to orbit last year,” he said. “And it wasn’t because the Chinese weren’t trying.” He credited the milestone-based cost-sharing partnership between NASA and SpaceX—a structure that fusion programs in the U.S. are now trying to emulate.
“The bad news is that it's underfunded,” he added.
Fusion's Next Chapter
For fusion to fulfill its promise, governments and investors must act urgently and coordinate.
Larochelle urged the audience to read a roadmap published by Commonwealth Fusion Systems titled Building Trust in Fusion Energy, which outlines six critical steps from concept to commercial reactor. “We have gotten through the first three steps largely due to government funding,” he said. “Now is the time to capitalize on it, so it pays dividends for society.”
He closed with a familiar quote from Winston Churchill, reframed for the fusion era: “Now that we’ve hit scientific break-even… this isn’t the end of the story. It’s not even the beginning of the end. I would say that we’ve just been through the primarily scientific phase of fusion, and perhaps we’re at the end of the beginning.”
In other words, the fusion age has finally begun—but whether it will be Western-led remains to be seen.