Blog
Insights into the fusion energy industry, future fusion power plants, plasma physics, tokamak design, diagnostics, and control, machine learning and reinforcement learning, and our work at Next Step Fusion.
2026
February 2, 2026Controlling Plasma Temperature and Safety Factor with Gyrotrons Using Reinforcement Learning
In previous blog posts, we have shown how reinforcement learning can be used to control the shape of plasma in a tokamak. In a research…
Read more →2025
December 11, 2025The Brain of Fusion Power Plants
How to Tame the Energy of the Stars
Read more → November 25, 2025Model Verification Using NSFsim: Plasma-free (Vacuum) Calculations
Plasma-free (Vacuum) Calculations
Read more → October 30, 2025How to Measure Plasma in Fusion Power Plants — Part II: Control Confidently Despite Imperfections
Part II: Control Confidently Despite Imperfections
Read more → September 30, 2025How to Measure Plasma in Fusion Power Plants — Part I: Diagnostics
Part I: Diagnostics
Read more → September 4, 2025NSFsim Perspective on Disruptions in Tokamaks — Part II: Simulations for DTT
Part II: Simulations for DTT
Read more → July 29, 2025NSFSim Perspective on Disruptions in Tokamaks — Part I: Physics Basis
Introduction
Read more → July 21, 2025"Fusion is no longer a thirty-year question — it's now a business race": Interview with Georgy…
Recent advances in superconducting magnets, plasma-facing materials, computational modeling, and artificial intelligence (AI) have created…
Read more → June 27, 2025ISTTOK Tokamak Engineering Adventures
Our journey into plasma control on the ISTTOK (large aspect ratio compact tokamak) using machine learning (ML) controllers began in the…
Read more → June 5, 2025Next Step Fusion Negative Triangularity Tokamak: Preliminary Design
As described in the previous article, we identified the key parameters of our medium-sized fusion machine, Negative Triangularity Tokamak…
Read more → March 25, 2025The Next Wave of Tokamak Innovations
While the spotlight in fusion research is increasingly shifting toward new formats and private-sector innovation, tokamaks remain at the…
Read more → February 20, 20256 Ways to Manage Your Fusion Data With Fusion Twin Platform
Fusion Twin Platform, fusiontwin.io, redefines fusion research by offering unparalleled access to precise tokamak simulations. Using the…
Read more → February 4, 2025Investing in Tomorrow: A Look at Fusion Energy Investment Landscape
The fusion energy sector has experienced significant growth in investments over the recent years, signaling growing confidence in its…
Read more → January 9, 2025How to Control Plasma in a Fusion Power Plant?
Fusion Power Plant (FPP) is the next frontier ultimate energy source that makes fossil fuels power plants look like yesterday's news. One…
Read more →2024
December 17, 2024Applying a Surrogate Model to an RL-Controlled Pulse
After conducting an experiment on the DIII-D tokamak with our Reinforcement Learning (RL) model for plasma control, and training a…
Read more → December 12, 2024Designing a Vacuum Vessel for a Negative Triangularity Tokamak
The vacuum vessel is one of the main components of a tokamak. It serves as the primary boundary for maintaining the high-vacuum environment…
Read more → October 21, 2024Next Step Fusion Negative Triangularity Tokamak Conceptual Design
In a previous article, we described why Next Step Fusion is interested in the Negative Triangularity approach. Now, we'd like to introduce…
Read more → October 7, 2024Next Step Fusion Collaboration with the ISTTOK Tokamak
At Next Step Fusion, we're constantly pushing the boundaries to bring our technologies closer to reactor-ready status. A key part of this…
Read more → September 30, 2024Developing an ML-based Surrogate Model for Plasma Boundary Prediction
Achieving precise plasma shape control is essential to the success of fusion experiments in tokamaks (for more information on plasma…
Read more → September 17, 2024Welcome the Fusion Twin Platform
We believe that NSFsim, our simulator, is brilliant due to its proven physical approach and focus on practical applications. It has been…
Read more → August 26, 2024Why Negative Triangularity?
At Next Step Fusion, we believe that recent and upcoming scientific and technological advancements will soon give rise to the fusion power…
Read more → August 12, 2024NSFsim: Validation and Verification of Synthetic Magnetic Diagnostics
In our previous post about NSFsim, we explained the process of digital replica validation to ensure precise simulations of tokamaks. Since…
Read more → July 31, 2024Building a Deep RL Model for Plasma Shape Control in Tokamaks
In the last post, we described NSFsim — our simulator of plasma in tokamaks. Now, we are excited to share the progress of our flagship…
Read more → June 21, 2024NSFsim
This is the first post of our tech blog, and it's intentionally about our simulator.
Read more →