(Image credit: Kyoto Fusioneering)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has announced a partnership with Japan’s Kyoto Fusioneering (KF) to develop technology for a fusion breeding blanket test facility. ORNL said the partnership will “leverage ORNL’s expertise in supercomputing, advanced manufacturing, materials science, and fusion research, and complement KF’s UNITY test facilities”.
The Unique Integrated Testing Facility Program includes the UNITY-1 blanket and thermal cycle test facility in Kyoto, Japan and the UNITY-2 deuterium-tritium fuel cycle facility under construction at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada. The new partnership will work toward the creation of UNITY-3 at ORNL, expected to be “a world-leading breeding blanket test facility capable of testing blanket concepts in prototypic fusion nuclear conditions”.
ORNL and KF plan to develop experimental infrastructure for testing and validating next-generation tritium breeding blanket systems, which are seen as crucial technology for producing the fuel needed to sustain fusion power generation. The work at UNITY-3 will complement the work at UNITY-1 and -2 while closing “critical gaps” that were identified in the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Fusion Science & Technology Roadmap released in October 2025.
Through the partnership, ORNL and KF will advance the technology readiness levels of tritium breeding blanket and fuel cycle systems. This collaboration will also develop key infrastructure, accelerate discovery through industry-informed collaborative research, and grow the US fusion sector through strategic public-private partnerships as part of DOE’s Tritium Blanket Development Platform under the Fusion Nuclear Science mission.
ORNL and KF have ongoing collaborations through DOE’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) programme, which involves evaluating the effect of lead-lithium mixtures for fusion blankets, and DOE’s Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) collaborative programme, where KF’s UNITY-1 facility will contribute to the ORNL-led Blanket Collaborative on Test Facilities project by investigating liquid metal blanket concepts. ORNL and KF are also codeveloping plans for public-private technology commercialisation and for exchanges of technical expertise and personnel between the organisations.
Kyoto Fusioneering’s UNITY-1 facility (Credit: ORNL)
Troy Carter, Director of ORNL’s Fusion Energy Division, noted: “Moving breeding blanket technology from theory to real-world application is crucial in realising a path to fusion energy. By combining ORNL’s deep expertise in fusion systems, materials and blanket research with Kyoto Fusioneering’s unique technology and engineering expertise, and integrated test platforms, this partnership can strengthen the public-private fusion ecosystem and support the commercialisation of fusion energy.”
According to Dr Darío Gil, DOE Under Secretary for Science, the partnership “reflects DOE’s commitment to working with trusted allies and the private sector to build critical infrastructure, strengthen American competitiveness, and deliver real, measurable progress toward making fusion energy a reality”.
Bibake Uppal, Vice-President and Head of KF’s US subsidiary, Kyoto Fusioneering Americanoted: “Partnering with ORNL allows us to tackle one of fusion’s hardest remaining cross-cutting challenges: validating breeding blanket performance in a nuclear environment. This collaboration operationalises the DOE’s ‘Build-Innovate-Grow’ strategy, combining ORNL’s deep scientific lineage in fusion nuclear science and engineering with KF’s fusion technology and engineering expertise. Leaning on our respective strengths through this public-private partnership, we will rapidly build essential infrastructure to close critical technology gaps and directly de-risk and accelerate the path to a fusion pilot plant.”
KF is a privately funded fusion technology group of companies with headquarters in Japan and subsidiaries in the US, the UK, the European Union, and Canada. KF is focused on developing high-performance advanced technologies and integrated systems for commercial fusion power systems, including electron cyclotron resonance heating and alternative plasma heating, tritium fuel processing, and breeding blanket technology for fuel production and power generation.
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AloJapan.com