How Japan’s helical stellarators HARUKA & KANATA work

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In September 2026, Japan’s trade ministry conditionally selected four industry-led projects to share roughly 60 billion yen, about 400 million dollars, to demonstrate fusion power generation in the 2030s. One of the four is Helical Fusion, a Tokyo startup spun out of the National Institute for Fusion Science that is building a helical stellarator instead of a tokamak, with a demonstration device called Helix HARUKA and a pilot plant called Helix KANATA. Here is how a helical stellarator actually confines plasma, and where the design could still fail.

13 days ago

Energy

How Japan’s helical stellarators HARUKA & KANATA work

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