General Atomics releases FUSE—an open-source fusion power design tool
Earlier this month, General Atomics made its Fusion Synthesis Engine (FUSE) software available to others who want to design and build magnetic confinement fusion power plants.
The software was created by GA in the programming language Julia to combine key elements of a fusion power system—including plasma physics, engineering, and cost analysis—in one system. It’s now accessible to anyone under an Apache 2.0 license, guaranteeing its free usage, modification, and commercialization. The move could enable more effective collaboration on fusion energy projects, reducing costs and bringing the goal of fusion energy closer, according to GA.
More about FUSE: According to FUSE documentation, while GA was developing its own fusion power plant design, it identified the need for a system that could test a concept design “in minutes rather than months,” give different physics and engineering teams a high-quality integrated representation of the design, and simulate fusion plant operations in both steady and dynamic conditions.
To meet those needs, GA developed FUSE by integrating “various complex models” with the following objectives in mind:
- Provide a highly efficient, modular framework that tightly couples models across different domains.
- Integrate plasma physics, engineering, control, balance-of-plant, and costing systems.
- Leverage machine learning to overcome the typical fidelity/speed tradeoff in simulations.
- Support both stationary and time-dependent simulations.
- Harness parallelism and high-performance computing for large-scale studies.
- Perform multiobjective constrained optimization to explore design tradeoffs.
- Enable comprehensive sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification.
They said it: “Releasing FUSE is a bold and exciting step that offers a powerful tool to the entire fusion community,” said Wayne Solomon, vice president of magnetic fusion energy for the General Atomics Energy Group. "This platform encourages teamwork and new ideas while fulfilling GA’s commitment to openness and progress. By making FUSE available to everyone, we’re not just advancing our own developments—we’re giving others the ability to build on it, with the goal of accelerating discoveries throughout the entire field."
“FUSE could have a big impact on the future of fusion energy,” said Orso Meneghini, a theory and computational science manager at GA. “One of its strengths is that it uses machine learning to speed up simulations, making it useful for improving plant designs and reducing uncertainties. Overall, Fuse’s flexibility and generality make it an important tool for advancing research in this critical area of energy research.”
Learn more: GA is offering a “code camp” to 40 interested participants this December 9–13 at its facilities in San Diego, Calif. Learn more and register here.
For more information and full documentation about FUSE, visit fuse.help.
