Abandoned Coal Power Plant to Be Used as Fusion Reactor in US

Tennessee-based Type One Energy is set to build the first fully developed thermonuclear reactor in the United States. The company’s first and largest client is the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a state corporation that supplies electricity to the largest data center operators in the United States. Construction of the pilot plant will begin in 2026, with launch scheduled for 2029. Thermonuclear power in the United States is just a few years away.

Render of the Proxima Fusion stellar. Image source: Proxima Fusion

In March, a special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics published six peer-reviewed papers by Type One Energy developers, as well as an editorial about the company’s reactor. The publications provide a detailed look at the design of the fusion reactor and the physics behind it.

«”We don’t need a scientific breakthrough to figure out how we’re going to do this. There are no fundamental technical unknowns that we need to figure out,” said John Canik, lead scientist and engineer at Type One Energy.

The company believes that the more than 70,000 calculations performed by its employees on supercomputers provide a complete picture of the physics of the process. However, as you might guess, there are still many engineering difficulties that need to be overcome.

In general, Type One Energy has developed a stellator, a type of thermonuclear reactor that promises to be more compact than previously conceived tokamaks. In some ways, the Type One Energy stellator will compete with a similar German development, the Proxima Fusion stellator.

Both companies, by the way, took part in the creation of the German thermonuclear installation Wendelstein 7-X, and also collaborated with scientists from the famous Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). The company Proxima Fusion is also targeting the American market and will compete for it with Type One Energy.

The site for the Infinity One experimental plant has already been selected: the closed coal-fired Bull Run station in Tennessee. Construction will begin in 2026, with the plant scheduled to launch in 2029. The next stage will be the Infinity Two plant, which will be built under contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority. The site has not yet been selected, but it will already be a full-fledged fusion power plant capable of generating electricity.

The Type One Energy startup was created in 2019. The company attracted its first investments in 2023 ($29 million). In 2024, the company has already raised $82.4 million, including funds from one of Bill Gates’ foundations. This year, the cash flow is expected to reach and even exceed $200 million. The agreement for the construction of a thermonuclear power plant (TNPP) with the Tennessee Valley Authority was concluded in February 2025. This positive news will certainly further fuel interest in the topic of controlled thermonuclear reactions.