Nuclear Fusion Energy and Plasma Physics

Fusion releases energy by fusing light nuclei rather than splitting heavy ones, producing no long-lived radioactive waste and consuming deuterium-tritium fuel available at near-limitless scale. Plasma must reach conditions defined by the Lawson criterion; magnetic confinement approaches use tokamaks and stellarators, while inertial confinement compresses fuel with lasers. The National Ignition Facility achieved ignition in 2022. ITER is under construction at Cadarache; India operates the SST-1 tokamak at IPR Gandhinagar. India's net-zero commitments and the National Hydrogen Mission framework give domestic fusion research a direct policy anchor.