 So good morning everyone to our all good afternoon everyone to our second episode of our fusion energy webinar series requested by the IEA and This episode will be a special episode. We'll cover Fusion energy at COP 28 a promising emerging climate solution. So following COP 28 We see nuclear is on the rise and nuclear fusion has been mentioned more and more and With the recent announcement of the international engagement plan for fusion energy at contact COP 28 and then follow up to the recent UK US Joint statement on fusion our panellists will discuss their perspectives on these announcements and the wider fusion outlook after COP 28 Fusion is developing fast and gaining momentum as a climate solution the COP 28 climate summit in Dubai highlighted the critical turning point reached by fusion energy and the growing consensus that international partnerships and fusion are the way forward So our speakers today are Scott Sue Sue a senior advisor and lead fusion coordinator For the office of the undersecretary for science innovation at the US Department of Energy We have Tim Bestwick the chief develop development officer and deputy CEO at the UK AEA Energy Authority We have Stephanie Diane and assistant professor from the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin Madison And finally we have Andrew Holland the chief executive officer of the fusion industry Association I'm your moderator Adam Daniel-Wilbig and I'll be glad to present Host and moderate this webinar We've started presentation first with Scott from the Department of Energy who has kindly agreed to give a high-level overview of Fusion and deliver his opening remarks on the US international engagement plan for fusion energy announced at COP 28. So the floor of you is yours Scott You Adam you can hear me. Okay? Greetings to everyone around the world I'm excited to participate in today's IAEA fusion webinar It was just a little over two years ago that I along with Tim Bestwick and Andrew Holland here today participated in the IAEA fusion webinar pushing for fusion energy in November 21 Since that time the technical progress and growing momentum in fusion have both been remarkable Today I focus my remarks on the US fusion international partnership strategy Which was announced last week at COP 28 by US special presidential envoy for climate John Secretary Kerry captured things well when he said we are edging ever closer to a fusion powered reality And at the same time Significant scientific and engineering challenges exist Careful thought and thoughtful policy are going to be critical to navigate this The Biden administration has prioritized tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad With the goal of reaching net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050 The United States is mobilizing its innovation enterprise to accelerate the next generation of clean energy technology breakthroughs To reduce greenhouse gas emissions promote energy security and resilience and advance economic development The White House net zero game-changers initiative announced in November of 2022 Recognizes that while the US continues to demonstrate and deploy more established technologies We must also focus on nurturing a pipeline of emerging technologies that will make it substantially easier or cheaper to reach net zero It is within this context that the US bold Decadal vision for commercial fusion energy is being pursued To set an ambitious plan for development demonstration and deployment of commercial fusion energy over the next decade and beyond As part of an innovation agenda to develop clean energy solutions Course the reason we are all excited about fusion is its potential to become become a globally scalable clean energy source with on-demand availability Manageable risks associated with safety and radioactive waste Abundant fuel if we are successful in breeding tritium and sustainability through high energy density and low land use Fusion could help the world meet rapidly growing clean energy demand Furthermore the availability of firm energy sources like fusion better enables a diverse clean energy portfolio that lowers overall energy system cost While increasing energy security and reliability To advance our bold Decadal vision and for the eventual global deployment of fusion energy international cooperation is essential Our international strategy announced at COP 28 last week by Secretary Kerry is entitled International partnerships in a new era of fusion energy development and has five pillars Fusion research and development including shared access to and development of key test facilities Growing the future global fusion marketplace including supply chains Promoting the alignment of regulatory frameworks Fostering a diverse global workforce pipeline and finally strong public engagement on fusion energy Placing research and development first is intentional Science is the backbone of the current and future future fusion enterprise Continued progress toward realizing commercial fusion energy relies on efforts to work together across nations to accelerate scientific progress continued emphasis and cooperation Among countries across public and private stakeholders Through enabling access to a shared development of key infrastructure and by leveraging international projects like Eater It's central to bridge the significant science and technology gaps ahead of a fusion future As we work to address the science and technology gaps We need to simultaneously foster a broader enabling environment for commercial fusion energy This includes growing the global fusion marketplace By facilitating fusion's market entry and building engagements with relevant stakeholders to identify supporting technologies manufacturing capabilities and current and anticipated global supply chains for global fusion deployment Our strategy also includes encouraging coordination with global partners to enhance dialogue on technical and policy issues To support the alignment of regulatory and export control frameworks for fusion The fusion timeline presents an opportunity to intensify needed efforts Across educational and professional levels and relevant sectors to grow a diverse fusion capable global workforce We need robust workforce development pathways to support progress from science to prototypes to deploying technology Opportunities to engage with partners to share educational resources and best practices that encourage talent exchanges will help grow the global fusion workforce Lastly just as foundational R&D comprises the first pillar public education and engagement intentionally serves as the other bookend pillar To facilitate eventual commercial fusion deployment. We must engage starting now with the public Building widespread understanding and early trust will help facilitate a social license for fusion energy as a safe responsible and clean energy solution Together this plan underscores the United States view that international cooperation and partnerships are essential to realize timely commercial fusion energy And we look forward to and invite engagements with our existing and new international partners Thank you and I look forward to the discussion to follow Thank you Scott. Now we'll give the floor to Tim Bestwick from the UK AEA who will give his opening remarks from the UK AEA's perspective. Thank you. Thank you Adam and thank you. Thank you Scott for that very helpful introduction. As Adam said I'm Tim Bestwick I'm Chief Development Officer and Deputy CEO at UK AEA It sounds like the UK Atomic Energy Authority would do all things atomic and once upon a time we did but now and in recent decades we've very much focused on fusion For the last 40 years we've hosted JET which I'm looking at out of the window behind my screen and JET is now going into the coming days of doing its last science experiments And we'll enter decommissioning early next year which is a pretty significant end of an era for us and the whole community that's been using JET as a tool and an experimental facility UK AEA is now arranged as a series of centres of expertise to cover the major technical aspects of fusion, including the integrated engineering, the tritium technology, the materials, remote maintenance and others. And alongside that we are also responsible for the UK's recent major step power plant development programme which is aiming to put prototype power plant fusion plant connected to the grid in the 2040s. UK AEA has grown very rapidly in recent years, along with the interest in fusion and the focus on the fusion programme and The number of people we have has doubled in the last five years to about 2,400 now at Cullum where I am. UK AEA's centres of expertise work with other fusion organisations across the world, public and private And across the spectrum of technical approaches, although our particular technical heritage is mainly in the in the tokamak approach. And that collaboration is really essential and I want to echo Scott's words in that the nature of the challenge that we all face in bringing fusion to be deployed technology to product status Is so substantial that we really have to collaborate and in many areas just can't afford to duplicate and that's not to say that there will not be inevitable competition within the private sector. But the the underpinning investments that's required is too large for everyone to do their own thing. UK AEA's step programme and our fusion industry programme and indeed our other programmes are all aiming to develop the industrial base in fusion, which we see as key Towards progress towards actual power plant product deployed power plant, which is of course where we all need and want to end up. To further foster collaborations, we're developing Cullum as a campus to be a fusion innovation campus with a real mix of public and private organisations with a common interest in the field using common facilities and sharing expertise where they're able to. And we're developing some of the spin off technologies from fusion in our innovation programme. It's something we don't talk about so much in fusion, but Broadly speaking, you can't have that many clever people working so hard on things that are so difficult without the fusion community inventing all kinds of things which have applications in other markets and we'd like to play our part in developing and exploiting those two. My area of UK AEA works on business communications and innovation and campus development and having a close and productive relationship with businesses of all types is really important to us and central to the future of fusion. I don't need to tell anyone here the huge size of the challenge of delivering deploying fusion energy. But one of the interesting balances that all of us in the field try to make on a daily basis is balancing that realism about the size of the challenge and what we still have to tackle and mature as technology to deploy. With the enthusiasm we have for progress in the field and what an extraordinary impact fusion is going to deliver to us all and be a really globally changing technology. I was very taken with John Kerry's comment that Scott quoted which is going to require careful thought and thoughtful policy which is I think spot on and that balancing act between huge enthusiasm but wide eyed realism about what we still have to tackle is I think something that we have to face up to debate and position ourselves carefully so that we bring everybody with us. And again another aspect that's really been touched on is the need to communicate widely about fusion, its opportunity and its challenges. I wasn't at the most recent COP but fusion did indeed feature higher than ever before. The profile of fusion gets higher and higher and I think that's because of that increasing widespread realization that an energy source with the attributes of fusion is very much needed in the global energy mix. And so the pressure is really on us as a community to step up to that and collectively deliver and as has been said a number of times, I think that inevitably absolutely requires widespread collaboration. Thank you. Thank you for your opening remarks Tim. Now let's move on to Steffi Dian from the University of Wisconsin Madison and she'll give her opening remarks. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here and thank you so much for the invitation and thanks for everyone who's joining today. Really it's a truly unique time for fusion. We've all seen that fusion is happening and it's moving really fast right now. I think we're all very cognizant that we're here today due to decades of hard work and also this convergence that we have right now of so many things from manufacturing. Large-scale computing, new technology, community plan and kind of a global effort really to close those remaining technical gaps coupled with a growing private sector. We've also had major recent achievements with record results from JET and especially those NIF reaching ignition last year, achieving what we have been challenged as a field to demonstrate. That's the feasibility of controlled fusion here on earth and they even repeated those results again this year. So now is the time to find creative pathways to really tackle those remaining technological and societal gaps to accelerate the development and deployment of fusion energy systems in support of an equitable energy transition. So I'm really excited to see what this US international partnership and also the UK US agreement will look like those details of both of those and I'm really excited to watch these partnerships grow. We really have a unique opportunity right now to embed environmental justice and energy equity into the design of these fusion energy systems and this will take a global effort to really build fusion for everyone. This is our opportunity to really do things differently from the start and we can start leveraging this US international partnership and the UK US agreement for fusion energy development. And we can start to address these some of these interdisciplinary challenges. I'm talking about these societal economic and environmental impacts of fusion energy at a global scale in parallel to our efforts of closing those technology gaps. This will then allow us to build societal consent through trust and transparency while we accelerate our efforts to move fusion energy out of the lab and into society to address the global challenges of the climate crisis. Energy security and support technological and economic growth in all countries. And now I'm just going to mention kind of three aspects of fusion technology development and these that I'm going to mention are really independent of a specific approach. I know we have a unique opportunity to explore a variety of different approaches to fusion and these these aspects of fusion technology development that I'm going to mention we really need to start addressing now. And I've really worked on identifying these with my colleague professor at the University of Michigan and then we've identified these three kind of pillars. The first is to look at an understanding of the environmental impacts of fusion energy across the whole technology life cycle. This includes resources and where their mind and along with decommissioning and radioactive waste storage recycling and clearance of materials. And an interdisciplinary approach is really needed to focus on a critical assessment of the impacts of fusion energy looking at kind of two things. An equity focused social and environmental life cycle assessment. This is really looking at who experiences different impacts of the technology and the resource and mining extraction with a strong focus on inequities in these impacts across locations time and for different populations. And we can also start to look at a dynamic life cycle assessment. One example of this being how the impact of demand for critical minerals depend on the increased demand in other sectors. Lithium is a great example of this. And the second aspect I'm going to mention is we can start by looking at developing unique methods of risk and safety assessment for fusion. So historically we've relied on a whole system design to be designed to actually do that risk and safety analysis. And by the time that a company has invested in this they've put in a substantial amount of money. And so they're going to be reluctant to change these designs at this point. So we can really rethink and take a different approach that does not rely on a whole system design to be designed to make decisions on the risk and safety analysis. The third is really to start working on engaging communities earlier in the design process. And this speaks to providing opportunities to approach community engagement through meaningful two way engagement where we can start to understand community members hopes and concerns for fusion energy systems and start this dialogue with technology developers. And my colleagues and I have started our initial efforts in these areas at our universities. Universities are really a perfect environment for this work as we already have experts in a lot of these areas that we can easily collaborate with. And we're also flexible enough to pivot on our approach as well. However, these efforts I've mentioned have really focused on the US and to develop to develop fusion for everyone across the globe. We need to start engaging broader. These are broader communities, broader fusion developers across the globe. So these the US international partnership and the UK US agreement can really help support efforts like this. And this information can be incorporated into these efforts to develop an international policy and standards for fusion. And the five areas that Scott mentioned that are involved in this US international partnership are really entwined with all those three aspects that I mentioned. And I just want to close with this. I mean fusion draws a lot of us right to work on this. It gives us hope in a world where we have weaponized energy and energy resources and access to minerals used in energy production. And we also have an amazing challenge ahead of us to commercialize it. Commercial fusion energy systems have the potential to provide the world with carbon free electricity among among other uses. And it can really provide a way to power the next phase of humanity. And fusion is engineering at the extremes. And while there are still many challenges that lie ahead for fusion. I think we all see that the potential benefits are huge. And I'm really excited to see more details and how these international efforts will be coordinated will be coordinated as we continue to push innovation and drive towards a cleaner and more sustainable and equitable future. And thank you so much. Thank you for the excellent points raised in your in your opening remarks. I'm sure we'll have a chance to discuss in the wider discussion later about all the points. And now we'll give the floor to Andrew Holland, the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association to give his opening remarks. Give the floor to you. And it's it's always a challenge to go last when everybody has already said so many great and important things. So in my talk here, I'm going to give a brief overview of the state of the private fusion industry. Our goals are timing the size and our growth. And then I'm going to switch gears a little bit, especially after top to talk a bit about the international sphere and how international collaboration can support and grow and what we can do. And then then I'll get off the stage and look forward to our discussion and questions. So I am the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association. We represent the emerging private fusion energy industry. We have 38 members that range in size from, you know, over 600 employees and billions of dollars in private investment down to companies that are two or three people and have raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars literally working in a garage. But what they all share is a plan for commercialization and that they have convinced investors to invest in fusion. It's it is a stark and kind of amazing growth that we've seen the FIA Scott mentioned that that we did the one of these webinars two years ago. At that point we were only six months old as an independent association. The FIA has grown since we started from 24 members to 38 members and that growth is it's not just purely linear. We've seen significant. We've some have left some have come as you'd expect in a startup economy. We now have over 6.2 billion dollars invested in private fusion companies around the world. In the last year we have seen 13 new fusion companies either emerge from from stealth mode or startup or is in some way, you know, we identified them as new. So, so there is significant growth. We've seen in the last two years from from about the time that we did this this last meeting that Scott mentioned, we've seen over four billion of that 6.2 billion dollars in private investment come. So it's an accelerating curve accelerating time frame. And so the answer is the question that that is bagged is why is this happening? What is going on that that that is indicating that fusion is moving from the public sector. You know, represented here by Scott and Tim and the universities represented by Steffi, you know, and moving into the private sector. Why is this suddenly happening now? Well, what we think is it's a combination of supply and demand, you know, supply being basically fusion is ready. Steffi mentioned the NIF breakthrough and Tim mentioned jet, you know, the major announcements of the DT campaign at jet a couple of years ago really indicated another another way point on this pathway towards fusion energy. We are confident enough that it will work when we build these next machines. They will work. We are confident of that because we have all of this demonstrated scientific growth over time. There has been continuous progress over the last 3040 50 years towards these breakthroughs. This is not just, you know, some science doesn't happen just in in the light bulb moment that. Oh my God, it just happened. These are companies standing on the shoulders of giants and moving forward. So so fusion is ready. And you combine that with the fact that the world needs fusion. And that was underscored at cop at the cop and underscored the fact that we need a new zero carbon firm source of energy. We know that renewables are growing fast. We know that solar and wind are growing as fast as they can combine that with battery storage and you can you can go a long way towards decarbonizing your electric. But the fact is, is that in developed economies, electricity is only a third of the total emissions. So you have to figure out a way other ways to do that. And also, as you get closer to 100% renewables, you start to have significant problems with your grid. So you need a firm source of energy. Scott mentioned this fusion can provide that and investors are looking at that now. And so so investors see this. There's a demand signal from the large companies who will be the buyers of this. I'd note that for the first time this year. We have a power purchase agreement for fusion energy. Microsoft is contracted with helium energy. One of our leading companies to to purchase 50 megawatts of fusion electricity in 2028. This is a significant and accelerated timeframe and and it signals that there is a need for this. And this is a climate solution that businesses want and increasingly that the internet that that we need for international politics international global affairs. Nothing has driven the need for energy for clean energy and fusion energy in particular more than events in over these last two years. In particular, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is is very clear would not have happened had there not been energy geopolitics happen. And so fusion has has risen to the top as something that can provide that always on and always available source of energy. Our companies are confident that we can meet there. We are very aware that fusion is hard fusion is challenging. There's a lot of still a lot of science left to be done a lot of open science that we have to have to get to. With that, let me let me switch a little bit to this this international landscape and I think it's appropriate we're talking about this at the IAEA because of course it was President Eisenhower's Adams for peace speech back in the 1953 I believe I believe we just we just hit the 70th anniversary of the Adams for peace speech last month and that that led to the creation of the IAEA the ability to, you know, internationalize and and build a peaceful use of atomic energy. Now we're and fusion, of course, the IAEA was the the place where in the late 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union and the UK agreed to basically open the books on fusion science and start to share internationally the science that was being done and the work that was being done. And of course we said we had the the fusion energy conference in London just in October that was the latest iteration of this. This is really important that there's a long history of collaboration, even among rival nations on fusion science and fusion development. But of course we have to be clear eyed that the geopolitics of 2023 are not the same as the geopolitics of the 1950s. It's no longer two pure adversarial blocks looking at it against each other it's a more diverse and multi polar world where that yes there are geopolitical rivalries and countries are going to be increasingly using fusion as a part of these geopolitical rivalries. We as the private sector have to both be aware of this and be involved in some places collaboration will will win over and in some places competition will win over. I'm happy to talk through details and what this might look like and everything like that, but I'm glad to know that the US government has put out this this international fusion strategy for the 21st century. You know, we've had international collaboration and fusion obviously for for 60 years now more, but now it's it's time to update that and discuss how this will will work in the 2020s and beyond as we move from a scientific collaboration into the increasingly competitive commercial landscape. So with that, I look forward to questions and happy to be with you all. It's, it is a good marker to have done this now two years later. I'm glad Scott mentioned that. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew for those opening remarks. I will begin with the questions now and I've got my first question to Scott. So, what would you say are the main objectives and benefits of the international engagement plan for the US and its international partners in fusion energy development. And how does the plan address the challenges and opportunities of fusion energy innovation and commercialization in a global context. Adam thanks for the question. Of course, that's a very meaty question. I'll give a brief answer. Well, I'll say is there are two key objectives and benefits of the plan are firstly, to mutually leverage the complimentary strengths and capabilities of partner countries. So as to accelerate progress and hopefully save costs for each partner. Okay, that's, you know, a rather pragmatic way to advance our collective vision toward toward the success of fusion. And secondly, to provide an inclusive partnership framework for both existing partners and new partners with very different levels of interest and capabilities and fusion. And this will help lay the foundations for eventual global commercial fusion deployment. The plan will hopefully lead to expanded and new partnerships. One example, of course, we can already point to is the US UK fusion joint statement that several of the speakers have already mentioned. As part of this partnership new collaborative priorities of mutual interest and of strategic importance to advance the fusion plans of each country will be identified in pursuit. You know, we can talk, I think at greater length on this question, but I'll stop there for now. Thank you, Scott. And with that, how ask a very similar question to Tim regarding the UK US partnership and what are the main objectives and benefits of this new strategic strategic partnership and fusion engine development. And what's the UK is role and perspective on this. Sorry, I think you're muted. I didn't think I was muted. Now you're back. I'm a back. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Adam. It's early days in this agreement, but we really are delighted to have got this collaboration in place and early next year we're going to be getting down to defining more detail. And it's just worth noting we're not starting from scratch. There's lots of great collaborative work and there's lots of strong collaborations between organizations in the US and the UK existing already. So this isn't a starting point. It's really just figuring out how we take collaborations to the next level. I think from a UK perspective, we are looking, I suppose there are two things I would highlight. One is that we're looking for complementarity. I think Scott mentioned this. The fusion public set fusion program is taxpayer funded, the taxpayer quite reasonably expects the best value for their tax dollar. And they don't want us to duplicate what might be done elsewhere and we could benefit from so it just seems obvious to start by collaborating on on things like expensive test facilities. In the UK where we have a fusion fuel cycle facility that's high on our on our list of priorities that we're just starting to get planning and implementing now. And talking about how that works in a complementary way with the US plans is just really important to us. So the complementarity is one part. And then another part is just the scale of the challenge we mentioned this already. For example, the scale of the challenge in in simulation and computing to accelerate fusion is huge. It really is huge. It's far greater than any single organization could could manage so it just makes sense to collaborate, divide up that challenge between us make as much progress together as we can. So, so it's collaboration to get scale it's complementarity and what it isn't of course is is a blending of our national programs national programs, but but together by collaborating we can be more efficient and more effective. Thank you for that great answer. I will give the next question to Steffi. You mentioned earlier in your introduction about how fusion energy must be adjusted sort of equitable energy transition and we must think about all the stakeholders. So, how do you, in your opinion, how can international corporation promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the fusion workforce, and what are some of the strategic or strategies or initiatives that could attract and retain talent from different backgrounds, genders and cultures, because you mentioned earlier, you've been working primarily in the US and you would like to see more sort of diversity in the workforce. So, how do you think international corporation can promote that? Thank you so much for that question. I think we've all kind of seen the studies that diverse teams lead to innovative solutions faster. And so we've also recognized that fusion really isn't that diverse of a field right now. So we really need to start actively working on changing this. This is diversity of thought. Background, ethnicity, race, religion, all different facets of diversity. International cooperation can really provide a pathway for more creative approaches to this. We can look at technical schools across nations to bring in students and researchers across nations, but also from different stem adjacent fields as well. We can also look at an exchange of researchers, technical experts and students in a variety of fields that are really needed needed to tackle the challenges of commercial fusion that we mentioned from the R and D side. One example that we do at my institution. So I'm the PI of a magnetic confinement device at the University of Wisconsin that just started running and we just had a, we hosted a student from the UK. So this provided a hands on experience for the students to actually run our Tokamak and craft and run an experiment to bring that hands on experience to students and researchers. Apprenticeships are also another pathway for participation to diversify our workforce. And we've also seen there's apprenticeship programs in the UK and also the US so sharing best practices for that. How do you bring people in from adjacent fields and how do you retain them and then providing that infrastructure and framework. That's what this agreement can do so that more people from a wider variety of sectors can then participate in fusion, both at their home institutions and abroad. And then these international collaborations can really help to simplify that process by having government buy in from the start to provide support to navigate the logistics of bringing in people, especially across nations and supporting these scholars as well. Underlying all of this really is having a healthy climate of diversity, equity and inclusion. It's really critical at these institution as well. So this focuses, we need to start focusing on how do we improve these climates in our workforces and we all really need to make a commitment to take immediate actions towards this. Some things that we can look at doing is sharing best evidence based practices on this and how do we work with experts in subject matter experts in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility to advise our communities globally to develop and develop assessment tools along the way. So we're making sure that we're incorporating evidence based practices and making sure that we're doing we're having progress in these areas. We can implement new and updated policies and codes of conduct to encourage inclusion and a sense of belonging for everyone. And then also incorporate the consideration and promotion of healthy climate efforts as an integral aspect of the review process if we're looking at our institution as well. And then also we can benefit from sharing what works in each other's countries. So one example I'll use from DOE in the US is the Renew Program. In particular, there's a funded pathways to Fusion Collaborative Center that the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is the lead institution of. And they are, they're building a collaborative center that's aimed at supporting efforts to bring in more underserved communities into plasma science and fusion energy field. And then to support these, these institutions as well to provide a framework of support structure that helps you with the retention aspect of this. And the group is also engaging with subject matter experts to develop best practices to do this work. And also, again, I'll mention student exchange programs can be great and those apprenticeship programs that I mentioned as well. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Steffi. My next question will be on public-private partnerships. I'll begin with Andrew, but I will welcome all of you to also follow up on that point because I think it's an important point. So what public-private partnerships should look like to de-risk deployment of fusion power plants? And how can public-private partnerships help overcome technical regulatory and market barriers to fusion energy deployment? So I'll give the floor to you, Andrew. Then I welcome all of you to follow up on this point. Yeah, of course, public-private partnerships are critical here. This is private companies, like I said, are building proof of concept machines right now that will prove their technology can be relevant in a commercial context. And then they'll move to building pilot plants. There's a lot of open and difficult challenges remaining in that span of going from proof of concept machine to a pilot plant. And so having access through public-private partnerships, having access to the really incredible research and scientific understanding within national government programs is, I mean, it's critical to accelerating this. Companies, of course, could try and replicate this all within internally. And that's one way of going, but it's not... We've talked about efficiency and such here. And after all, what are national programs for other than to ultimately build pilot plants? And if private companies are building pilot plants, we should be able to partner with these national governments to push that forward. So this is critical. Every government's going to do it in its own way. And every government, the culture of public-private partnerships and the legal institutions is different in every country, in every government. And so the FIA is active in many of these places around the world to talk about the importance and the need for public-private partnerships to show that our companies are building towards pilot plants and will be the ones that commercialize fusion energy. And I think this is an important thing. Of course, the markets are different in different places around the world. Energy markets are different, and some are more dominated by government firms, and some are more dominated by the private sector. But we think there's an inherent efficiency in having the private sector, the ones who will be building commercial power plants. After all, that's what we're here for, is to build power plants that will sell power. It's efficient to have the private sector be the ones to do that. And so that's why it's important. Public-private partnerships that include government dollars or government funding, pounds, dollars, euros, yen, yuan, whatever are important to accelerating this as well. But actually the critical part is access to the expertise within the national programs and facilitating that and doing it at a speed that is relevant to the climate crisis, that is relevant to the energy security crisis. We can't continue to just run at the speed of bureaucracy. We have to run at the speed of business. And I think that's why our companies are adding that urgency to this. Fusion is so important that we can't just wait. We have to get moving and get on. So we think that that's the most important thing. Let's get to work and let's get it going. Thank you, Andrew. Scott, would you like to follow up on this point and maybe then I'll give the floor to Tim as well. Sure, I'll, you know, I'll mention a few high level principles, you know, that, that, that I and the DOE are trying to bring to this conversation. I'm so a couple of things, you know, we. I think it's important to focus on the strengths and the missions of each sector and to work toward aligning their interests so, so, so that they're, you know, everyone's rowing in the same direction. You know, we try to connect the public expertise with the very aggressive private development demonstration pathways. It's important for because PPPs bring in inherently market signals, and this ensures that that applied R and D activities in the public sector are focused on solutions with commercial pathways. Programmes can catalyze greater private investments and efforts and, you know, that's, that's a central pillar of the milestone based fusion development program that was launched by the fusion energy sciences program last year. And also there are thoughts on how to leverage private facilities to advance public sector scientific research. You know, a DOE has been approached by, by multiple private fusion companies, you know, who are interested in finding ways to leverage the facilities they have built for public sector science. So, but as Andrew says, you know, this, there's a lot of learning involved and growing pains involved. And I think from a policy perspective, we have a good feel for, for what programs like the milestone program or aiming to achieve and what new public private partnerships might aim to achieve, you know, for example and delivery of test facilities. But, but this is new and, you know, we do look at precedents like the NASA COTS program and I think a lot of people understand that such programs have existed, but it's still hard to find, you know, the people where the rubber hits the road in implementing these programs because they're still used to, you know, programs and contracting ways in typical government funded programs. So, so we're, we're working through that. I'm still, you know, very hopeful that the milestone program will continue and get off the ground successfully. So I'll pause there. I'll end there. Just a quick follow up for our audience. Would you be able to briefly explain what the milestone program is and what are the its objectives. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry. I didn't do that. The milestone based development program is a centerpiece of our bold to cattle vision. It is private sector led but with with strong public partnerships encouraged to realize preliminary engineering designs of a fusion pilot plant. The most aggressive companies are hoping to do that, say within the next five years this is reaching a preliminary engineering design. Maybe some of the earlier stage companies would be, you know, taking a major step toward having a viable preliminary engineering design so it's a five year program it's not going to build the fusion pilot plant but it's a step toward the potential construction of a fusion pilot plant that that will be private sector led it. I think some unique aspects of it that we borrowed from the NASA COTS program it is milestone based payments, fixed support payments. So the companies sign up mutually negotiated milestones and when the milestone is met and these are intended to be significant critical path milestones. So both on scientifically engineering and commercialization milestones, then the federal government would issue a payment. And the payment is for the company meeting that milestone so it's intended to catalyze private investment it's intended to catalyze focus on the largest critical path milestones and it's intended to catalyze partnerships between the public and the private sector and resolving those very significant scientific challenges and engineering challenges. Thank you. Tim, would you be able to also elaborate on public private partnerships and UK is involvement in this regard. Yeah, obviously they're really important. Andrew and Scott have said lots of important things about them and where we're at now I was going to look a little bit further into the future about something that worries me and share that with everyone. So at the moment, we have lots of emerging great partnerships of all kinds of different flavors between private sector fusion companies and national labs and and other institutions that are getting going and I don't want to sound complacent because they have to all bear fruit but there's lots of great stuff happening. I think that once we've, you know, really fully established to our confidence that fusion will work and where we're kind of there or there about a lot of our attention is going to turn to actually getting the technology to the point where it's just it's deployable it's built at the right price it's reliable it's schedulable it just has the attributes of a commercial product. And I think getting from pilot plant stage to that stage is something that that's certainly worrying me at the moment and I think the reason I mentioned that in this context is that's going to need another kind of trance of public private partnerships that aren't really there yet, because we're going to have to say we the kind of the larger we the global fusion community is going to have to involve the kind of giant engineering companies who really know how to take product through to a really mature technology that can just be deployed because there is kind of no point in doing fusion if it's always going to be the scientific niche it has to be deployed widely and make a difference to global energy production to do that it has to be a mature product technology and to do that is going to need super large scale resources. That's going to need the right kind of organizations in it. It also is almost certainly going to need large scale government support in some form or other to make that happen so I think that's the kind of flavor of the next wave of public private partnerships that will be needed to make a difference to the deployment of fusion. Thank you. I have another question regarding the US strategy and you can you partnership and that's. There are some overlap between these these announcements research and development workforce development plans so what. What are the possible areas of research and development that can be pursued in concert and together what the best areas of collaboration. So I'll give the floor to Scott and Tim and then I think Andrew Holland could follow up from a private sector perspective and Steffi from how university and academia can help in this. Thank you Adam well so firstly the overlap between the US strategy and the US UK partnership is not an accident. The US UK partnership was you know was the first joint statement issued and it was at least from the US side we based it very much on the international strategy which which at the time was not yet unveiled. In terms of areas of overlap. Yeah I mean they're also first of all there are so many R&D opportunities that there's certainly no shortage of options and Tim already mentioned many of them and we're wholeheartedly in agreement there in terms especially from the US perspective areas and fuel cycle and materials and especially test facilities so resonate with those examples. You know with the UK we expect that the partnership will eventually touch on all five pillars that that that I discussed and you know this may or may not be true with all with all the partners that we hope to engage. I'll pass the floor to the next speaker. Yeah, well I mean I think Scott has said it really. There are so many areas of R&D that setting candidate ones is not the issue it's prioritizing really. I think I already mentioned some of them Scott did as well. You know facilities access to facilities I mean the UK. The digital fusion community is very interested in in in this collaboration and developing it. I mentioned digital is a huge area that affects all the fusion. Yeah, there are there are manifest list of R&D activities so actually it's a matter of it's a matter of prioritization rather than trying to seek out some some ones to begin with. Andrew would you like to follow up on this point as well about research and development and workforce development. How the private sector can get involved. Sure I mean what I'd say to on collaboration is is great and important. But also this is a this is an emerging market as well an emerging market marketplace. And so that means that companies are competing with each other you know I'm I'm here the the fusion industry association but we have to remember that these 38 companies are all competing with each other. Both to be who's first and also to be that you know Tim mentioned the the efficiency standards and to you know competition is the way we drive down costs competition is the way our free market economy works. And so you know these these companies will be competing against each other and largely also the countries should remember that it is a it's a competition for who will host these companies where these companies will be set up. And you know part of that will be the the strength of their R&D part of that will be the access to their government programs part of that will be the the policy and regulatory environment that that's put up about it. And part of it will also be the workforce you know having a workforce that is keen to to to be involved and and grow within this. So you know I think it's great to talk to talk about yeah we all want to work together and you know kind of the post cop moment is always a rah rah we want to be together and work together. But you know in in the way our economies are set up the way we actually get there and the way we actually you know get to these these goals is competition. And so it's international competition yes but it's also business competition. And so so I think that these are these are kind of a you know there's a bit of attention there but it's right but there should be some tension there. Thank you Andrew. Steffi would you like to finish off on that point on maybe from a university and academia perspective. Sure I can talk about that from the the R&D perspective from a university. I mean we offer unique hands on experiences where people can actually go and run the experiments they can modify the experiments that is very unique and not really available most places. We have that interdisciplinary research that's available that I mentioned in my opening statement and then the flexibility to really pivot and tackle challenges as they arrive. The other thing we can do at universities is look at the early stages of innovation and really get that fundamental understanding of the physics and the technology as we develop it. And then we can work on developing models and understanding how the technology would scale up and that's one of the drivers of the experiment that I run is how do you think about innovative ways to start up future fusion power plants through game changing technology. You can test a different variety of different models and technology to see what works and what doesn't work and develop it and scale it up. And then also the last thing I want to bring up too is because of these early stages of innovation and understanding many private companies have actually spun out of universities too. So they're all kind of tied together and they really drive as Andrew mentioned that competition too because there's so many ideas that we're coming up with and then moving forward some will some will move forward some will combine and it will change. Yeah, thanks. Thank you very much. I'll ask one more question now that we're nearing the end of the webinar, and then we'll finish off with some closing remarks. So, to all of you, as you have all quite public facing roles. In your opinion, how can we engage with different stakeholders such as policy makers, regulators, industry leaders, academia, media or civil society to raise awareness and support fusion energy. In your opinion, how can we do this best? Let's start with Scott. I'll try to be brief here since we're running late on time. I would say, you know, especially to the fusion scientists and technical folks out there. You know, go to professional and social events outside your own sphere of comfort. You know that's really how I started my path from being a garden variety scientist to where I am now. You know, talk to and understand the perspectives of those and other professions who will impact fusion and always from funding to R and D to supply chain to regulation and to the end customer. I think I think that in the end will be the greatest way, you know, to to start to have broader impact on this conversation. Thanks. Let's move to Tim. Of all the long things I could send the answer, I'll just pick one simple one. I think we can do better in using common straightforward language to describe what we do. You know, the fusion is a little bit tribal still and each tribe tends to use its own language. The more as a fusion community, we can at least use the same language, even though many of us are doing different bits within that community, the better. So I'd say common language. Steffi honesty and transparency. We can use that to build. Build trust we can also partner with people in other aspects of like sociology risk communication and public engagement and science communication to kind of to build that to effectively communicate. Get scientists and engineers to train and science communication. So I'm trained in empathy based science communication so I can do this work. And then really sit down and have these meaningful 2 way engagements with community members. And so we want to really understand their hopes and concerns for fusion and how that technology may align with their values and that can then go on to inform how we design these systems and inform policy. Thank you. Andrew. I think the, we should take some examples from other recent emerging technologies and how to how to build both both good and bad. But, but 1 of the best ways to to build a. Global awareness is, is in fact not to think about. Mass communication and you have to convince 100% of the public that fusions. You know, going to change their lives. What we instead need is a book called raving fans. We need a small group of raving fans of fusion a small group of really, you know, a cadre of, you know, people who are willing to to go out and talk about that. The really game changing importance of this and so, you know, we have to, we have to start building this, this communications group from within the fusion community. You know, the most effective communicators on fusion are actually the scientists who can speak with authority. But then making like, like both Steppy and Tim said, we have to make sure that they can speak in a language that is able to be heard by by this large, larger group. But then we also have have to have just, you know, the raving fans who are who want this to happen and are making a demand pull for it out there. So, so I think that that's a key thing that that folks should be focused on and trying to get that, that, you know, that cadre of really excited people pulling forward. Thank you all for your exciting answers and engagement throughout this discussion. And as we have heard international partnerships and fusion are the way forward. And the idea has launched an initiative called the World Fusion Energy Group, which aligns with many of the things we have heard today. And then from 2024, the World Fusion Energy Group will bring together public and private sectors, industry, academia and civil society to establish a collaborative framework with a view to accelerate research development demonstration and deployment of safe and sustainable fusion energy to the market. So stay tuned for this and keep engaged as we move forward. So thank you all for attending this webinar. And once again, thank you to all our speakers who have really generously given that given their time to discuss this important topic and see you next year for future episodes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a nice day.