Nuclear fusion company announces potential plans to build $1 billion facility in Albuquerque

The codename: Project Solis. The work: nuclear fusion testing. The cost: $1 billion. The site: Albuquerque?

For the past few months, local and state officials have discreetly been talking with Pacific Fusion, a California-based company that could set up a 225,000-square-foot nuclear fusion facility worth $1 billion in Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol or another site in the city. With the research and development facility could come 200 permanent jobs and hundreds more construction jobs.

The New Mexico Economic Development Department and Pacific Fusion officials announced on Wednesday a memorandum of understanding for the site. Officials had been working on the project behind the scenes for the past few months under the pseudonym Project Solis.

Pacific Fusion was founded in 2023 with the initial goal of achieving what is known as “net facility gain” in fusion by the end of the decade — essentially generating more energy than is consumed. The Mesa del Sol facility, subject to change, would help the company reach that milestone.

Nuclear fusion is the process of combining atomic nuclei to a single, heavier nucleus, which releases large amounts of energy. For example, the sun is powered by fusion. But achieving fusion here on Earth has proven difficult.

The work differs from nuclear fission, which splits nuclei and is already used at nuclear power plants to generate electricity. This project wouldn’t create a power plant.

Fusion has long been considered “the holy grail of energy,” said Pacific Fusion Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Carrie von Muench. She said nuclear fusion has no carbon emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste and provides on-demand power.

Venture capital firms General Catalyst and Breakthrough Energy Ventures were among the sources of more than $900 million in Series A funding into Pacific Fusion last year, and von Muench said she’s confident the company will obtain the rest of the money needed to set up the $1 billion facility.

If unlocked at a large scale, fusion technology could be a key part of solving the nation’s growing energy crisis, as the demand for energy increases at an unprecedented rate due to economic development and population growth, von Muench said.

“If you can build huge machines that work and that work affordably, you have a really important piece of the puzzle to meet with growing demand in a way that’s decoupled from the consequences of climate change,” von Muench said.

While scientists have studied fusion for decades, more significant breakthroughs in the industry have come in recent years, including at Sandia National Laboratories. The lab is home to the most powerful pulsed power facility in the world, the Z Machine, where a United Kingdom fusion company set a record earlier this year for the highest quartz pressure achieved, to support the potential commercialization of fusion in the future.

Pacific Fusion’s chief technology officer, Keith LeChien, also formerly worked at Sandia.

But that’s not the only national lab working on fusion advancement. California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has also made significant strides in the field, presenting another option for where Pacific Fusion could set up its facility.

Pacific Fusion will make a decision this fall whether the R&D facility will be in Albuquerque, Alameda, California, or Livermore, California, von Muench said.

“Getting a full data-driven sense of all those things just requires you to work through detailed diligence on each site,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing over the months ahead, so that we can make an informed decision.”

New Mexico’s national labs and talent base are not the only attractive factors for Pacific Fusion. New Mexico has aggressive renewable energy priorities, which both von Muench and Economic Development Secretary Rob Black pointed out.

Black and other state officials are in the process of negotiating incentives to help draw the company in, such as the Local Economic Development Act and the Job Training Incentive Program.

“Part of this is the idea that they would be creating hundreds of jobs — average job (salary) being over six figures — and putting $1 billion of infrastructure investment into the state,” Black said.

The company is already seeking the regulatory approvals needed to set up in Albuquerque.

Under the pseudonym Project Solis — which von Muench explained was used while experts completed preliminary due diligence on potential sites — LeChien on Tuesday presented to Albuquerque’s zoning hearing examiner, seeking permission for the research and testing facility at a 17-acre site at Mesa del Sol. Hearing Examiner Robert Lucero will decide in two weeks whether to approve or deny the request.

“We’re excited to see where this could go,” von Muench said.