In my past life, I was a chemical engineer who specialized in alternative energy sources, and while I have since then moved away to a completely different field of work, I still take a lot of interest in energy and related subjects.
One of these subjects is nuclear energy and, more specifically, nuclear fusion. I will not go into the technical details of what nuclear fusion is but just know that it's not the same thing that happens in the nuclear plants we have up and running these days - that is nuclear fission.
Another thing you should know is that nuclear fusion is the process that happens in the Sun, and it's very efficient as it can generate a great quantity of energy from a relatively small amount of matter.
Nuclear fusion for energy generation
Nuclear fusion is not a new thing. It's been researched for decades but so far there was no major breakthrough in the sense of commercial applicability. That can be partially explained by the technical challenges involved; after all, the process basically involves creating a "lab-grown" small Sun, which is incredibly hard to stabilize. In fact, one of the projects that are researching nuclear fusion has been dubbed "The Artificial Sun."
That doesn't mean, however, that the research is stagnant. Every now and then there are reports of new milestones reached by the different companies and teams that are working on making viable nuclear fusion reactors.
One of the latest news of the sort was from the Canadian startup General Fusion. They have just announced that they were able to create plasma inside its prototype reactor.
One interesting aspect of this is that General Fusion uses a technology called Magnetized Target Fusion, where a magnetic field and mechanical compression are used to create the conditions needed for compressing plasma inside the reactor. This technology is considered "old-school," and it's a different approach than the ones used by most other teams.
Next steps for General Fusion
Now that their prototype is generating plasma daily, the next step for General Fusion is to compress plasma to create fusion and heating from compression. They plan to achieve scientific breakeven by 2026. That means producing the same amount of energy than what is delivered to the plasma.
After that comes commercial breakeven where the reaction produces more power than the entire fusion facility consumes, and can feasibly deliver electricity for practical usage, but there is no set date for that yet.
AI and crypto
I believe the connection between these topics is very clear for those who have been following recent technological developments, but let's break it down.
Nuclear fusion can potentially unlock the production of huge amounts of energy. Something like we have never seen before.
Artificial intelligence relies on huge amounts of data. For that data to be collected, stored, and further "fed" to train AI models, a lot of energy is required. Even though more algorithms and hardware get more energy-efficient with time, the energy-saving curve just cannot keep up with the ever-increasing consumption curve, and sooner rather than later, this gap will become a bottlenecknock for development.
Crypto also has a need for energy. Even though most networks these days use some kind of Proof of Stake protocol, which is less energy-intensive than Proof of Work, the latter is not going anywhere anytime soon as we will still be mining Bitcoin for many years.
And it's not only that. Crypto and AI will become more and more interconnected as Agent development progresses. The agentic internet will consequently create an agentic economy and that will run on crypto. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of this article and will be addressed in the future but it's enough to say that traditional monetary exchange systems, even the modern ones, simply cannot keep up with the changes that are being introduced by AI agents.
As AI advances, it will require more data, more computing resources, and more energy, and crypto will be the "connective tissue" that makes it all economically viable.
Final thoughts
Our demand for energy will only increase and technologies such as Artificial Intelligence will cause this demand to skyrocket like never before. Because of that we need to develop more efficient ways of generating energy in order to keep up with the growing demand.
Nuclear fusion may still be years away of being economically viable but it could be our best long-term alternative so expect to see more and more companies investing in that.