◎ Wang Xiaozhong
General Fusion is the first nuclear fusion technology company in history to rush to the public market. (Taken from the post)
Before we start discussing which nuclear fusion technology company is the most worthy of investment, let me first pick up the microphone and solemnly announce: Just last month (July 2026), Canadian nuclear fusion company General Fusion was listed in the United States. This is the first publicly listed nuclear fusion company in human history! Headquartered in Vancouver, General Fusion (stock code: GFUZ) was founded in 2002. It is a nuclear fusion technology company that many people did not expect to be his first.
What's even more amazing is that the technical route taken by this company is neither the mainstream discussed in "Ten Steps to the Nuclear Energy Renaissance: Analysis of the Nuclear Fusion Technology Route Favored by Investors", nor is it the mainstream in "Twelve Steps to the Nuclear Energy Renaissance: How does the nuclear fusion reaction generate electricity?" "The same field discussed in "Nuclear Fusion" is not a typical nuclear fusion, but uses the exclusive Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology, please see the picture below.
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(Figure 1) General Fusion magnetic target nuclear fusion reactor
Source: POWER
General Fusion, the first nuclear fusion technology company in history to rush to the public market
First, a magnetized plasma ball (usually an FRC structure) of hundreds of eV is formed in the center of the reactor, and the outer layer is a spherical body filled with liquid metal. When the plasma is formed, hundreds of high-power pneumatic pistons simultaneously fire the liquid metal and implode toward the center on a microsecond scale, compressing the plasma to nuclear fusion conditions of several keV. MTF does not require Tokamak's extremely long plasma confinement time, nor does it require inertial confinement of extremely high plasma density. Therefore, it avoids expensive superconducting magnetic fields and high-energy laser systems and directly uses existing industrial technologies. For example, in the most powerful 16-cylinder W16 supercar turbine engine on the planet, the engine piston directly compresses the fuel to an explosion temperature of 1,500~2,000 degrees Celsius, converting the chemical bonding energy of the fuel into extreme power. The MTF piston compresses liquid metal, causing the implosion core plasma to reach hundreds of millions of degrees of nuclear fusion, releasing astonishing nuclear bonding energy. The difference is that the multiple pistons of the turbine engine take turns to compress multi-cylinders in milliseconds, while the hundreds of pistons in MTF collectively exert force on a single cylinder in microseconds. Therefore, MTF can be regarded as the ultimate nuclear explosion version of the supercar engine upgraded tens of millions of times.
General Fusion is preparing to rely on the Liquid Metal Wall to overcome the three natural chasms that nuclear fusion companies need to break through at once
In addition to igniting nuclear fusion, the liquid metal wall is its unique skill. It has overcome the three extremely high engineering and technical challenges mentioned in the previous article about nuclear fusion business.
Say neutron irradiation will deform materials? The thick layer of liquid metal in the liquid metal wall overcomes hardness with softness, effectively defuses the impact of high-energy neutrons, fully absorbs high temperature and heat, and protects the peripheral steel structure from being damaged by strong radiation. The high-voltage system of traditional nuclear power has reached the limit of engineering materials, and liquid metal cooling is currently a feasible way.
That tritium is expensive and extremely rare in nature? The liquid metal wall just now can not only resolve the threat of high-energy neutrons to the furnace material, but also use lithium atoms to absorb neutrons and react to generate tritium, solving the problem of expensive outsourced fuel and achieving fuel self-sufficiency.
Saying that nuclear energy does not have a complete supply chain? Liquid metal smoothes pulse energy into a continuous heat flow, generating steam to drive traditional turbines to generate electricity. This is the existing steam power generation technology of thermal or nuclear power plants, and the industrial chain is mature and reliable. Therefore, the fuel plasma is formed and injected → the piston ignites → the liquid metal absorbs heat and sends it to the heat exchanger → generates steam to drive the turbine to generate electricity → the liquid metal incubates tritium → takes tritium and adds deuterium to form new fuel, and this continuous cycle continues.
General Fusion predicts that its levelized energy cost will be lower than that of all nuclear fission power plants, including small nuclear power, and even enough to compete with natural gas and wind and solar storage
Although it was the first incense on the market, it did not come out of nowhere. It was the accumulation of countless technologies and efforts along the way. The growth process did not skip levels, but under rapid iteration, the time schedule of each step was greatly compressed. So far, General Fusion has conducted more than 200,000 plasma experiments. After two generations of six-seater prototype design and experiments, three plasma formers (PI2, PI3, PI4) and two liquid metal compressors (LM1, LM2), after twenty years of practice, this pre-commercial demonstration machine finally began to take shape:
●2002~2022: PI2, PI3, PI4, LM1, LM2
●2023~2024: Demonstration machine design completed
●2025: Site project postponed
●2026: Demonstration machine assembly has not yet begun
●2028~2029: Demonstration machine starts operation
●2032~2035: Commercial prototype machine starts small-scale power generation
●2035~2040: The first commercial-to-nuclear fusion power plant is connected to the grid
"Nuclear Energy Renaissance in Eight Parts: Who is the most worthy investment in the new generation of nuclear fission technology companies?" 》In this article, we talked about the indicator of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). General Fusion currently predicts that its levelized energy cost will be US$64 to US$73, which is lower than all current nuclear fission power plants, including small nuclear energy, and even enough to compete with natural gas and wind and solar storage.
The listing representative has made a profit, can I buy it?
The launch of General Fusion is a milestone in nuclear fusion, and it will take 2035 to 2040 to achieve commercialization. Because it has only been listed for a month, there is no consensus among brokerage analysts yet. The current valuation reference in the market includes a private equity valuation of approximately US$425 million in 2023. After the listing in 2026, the stock price once reached US$14.85 and has now fallen to approximately US$7.0, with a total market value of approximately US$400-500 million.
The company's choice to list publicly in the United States means that local investors have the ability to value green technology that will take a long time to see returns. It is probably hard for you and me to imagine the possibility of a Taiwanese nuclear fusion technology company going public. For a long time, we have been good at making money by following other people's footsteps, but no one in Taiwan has the ability to evaluate green technology. The value of almost all green companies in Taiwan has been seriously underestimated, let alone listing.
Like Steve Jobs, who was kicked out of Apple and came back more than ten years later to create Apple's trillion-dollar dynasty; or OpenAI fired Ultraman in 2023, but came back with the joint endorsement of 90% of the company's employees. Both are exceptions. Back to nuclear energy, NuScale was also the first nuclear fission technology company to go public in history, and it was the first and only company to obtain NRC design certification. Now, many years have passed and there is still no physical product. History tells us with a lot of living examples that many new ventures fail to achieve success, and going public is often a double-edged sword. If you want to invest in General Fusion now, it will be very much like buying an option. Considering that the current technical route, commercialization time, and the amount of continuous cash burn are still highly uncertain, its enterprise value can be understood as approximately equal to the option value of technical success + cash value − subsequent financing dilution risk.
As of June 2026, more than 17 billion US dollars have poured into private nuclear fusion technology companies. The figure below proves that the masters are among the private sector and the funders are in the United States.
(Figure 2) Distribution of global investment companies in nuclear fusion technology
Source: Reuters
Although it is not as good as the 25 billion invested by ITER, let alone the national team that has invested more than 100 billion in the past half century. In the next article, we will select several nuclear fusion technology companies favored by investors and continue to dismantle and analyze them.
Author introduction
Graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering of National Taiwan University and received a PhD in environmental radiation from Northwestern University. He has been involved in industry, government, academia and research for more than 40 years. He has served as a visiting expert for the National Energy Council, the National Science Council (Chicago Science Group Leader, Executive Secretary of the Council for Environmental Development), the US National Research Institute, and a nuclear safety expert in the US nuclear energy industry. He has also taught at National Taiwan University of Civil Engineering and Public Health, Chengdu University, University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Science and Technology, National Chengchi University, Tamkang University, Yunnan University of Science and Technology, etc. He cultivates writing in his spare time, served as the editor-in-chief of several scientific and technological publications, won the first popular science literature award of the National Science Council, and now serves as a green leader of the Green Academy.
