U.S. energy secretary says AI will usher in commercial nuclear fusion within years

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the BBC that artificial intelligence will enable the harnessing of nuclear fusion within five years and that fusion power could appear on electricity grids worldwide in eight to 15 years.

Wright, speaking in Brussels in an interview with the BBC’s climate editor, said recent work at national laboratories and private companies, combined with AI, would produce "that approach about how to harness fusion energy multiple ways within the next five years." He added: "The technology, it'll be on the electric grid, you know, in eight to 15 years."

Wright's timeline for commercial fusion, which replicates the reactions that power the sun and stars, will surprise many in the scientific community. Fusion requires confining and heating atomic nuclei to temperatures many times hotter than the sun to produce energy, a technical challenge that researchers have described as formidable and long-term.

Most fusion scientists say commercial, grid-ready fusion plants remain distant. Progress in the field includes experimental milestones and growing private-sector investment, and researchers have reported controlled fusion events that released energy for short periods. But translating those results into continuous, economically viable power generation requires solutions to sustained plasma confinement, material durability under extreme conditions, and overall plant engineering and cost issues.

Wright also used the interview to press other energy policy points. He urged the United Kingdom to lift its de facto ban on hydraulic fracturing and to issue new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, saying fracking could have a "tremendous" impact on the UK economy by lowering energy prices and boosting manufacturing jobs. Wright, who has founded and run fracking companies in the United States, said increased domestic production could "bring back manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and drive down not just electricity prices, but home-heating prices and industrial energy prices." British geological surveys and some experts have warned the potential for large-scale domestic oil and gas production from fracking in the UK is limited.

The secretary warned of dependency risks from foreign manufacturers of renewable technology, saying the Trump administration had "serious concerns" about Europe’s reliance on Chinese renewables and raising the prospect that China could exert control over energy systems through technology exports.

Wright defended cuts to U.S. renewable energy subsidies and questioned the duration of long-standing support for wind and solar. "Isn't that enough? You've got to be able to walk on your own after 25 to 30 years of subsidies," he said, referring to multidecade incentives for those industries.

He also stood by a Department of Energy report issued in July that questioned aspects of mainstream climate science, saying the threat of climate change has been exaggerated. The report drew strong criticism from the scientific community: more than 85 international scientists said it contained errors, misrepresentations and selective data use and questioned the academic standards of the authors. Wright countered that climate science itself is often "cherry-picked" by activists, media and some scientists, and said he welcomed public debate on the issue.

Wright acknowledged that climate change is a "very real, physical phenomenon" and said he expects the world to decarbonise but predicted that would occur over generations rather than decades. He defended proposed cuts in funding for some U.S. climate programs, including a plan to reduce funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amid concerns that such cuts could slow development of weather satellites or jeopardise long-running observatories such as the Mauna Loa CO2 record in Hawaii.

Wright was in Brussels ahead of a scheduled visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the United Kingdom. His comments touch on a range of policy debates: the pace and costs of decarbonisation, the role of emerging technologies such as AI in accelerating scientific breakthroughs, national security concerns tied to global supply chains for renewable hardware, and the economic trade-offs of energy subsidy policies.

Experts caution that while AI is being used to accelerate research in fusion—optimising reactor designs, controlling plasmas and analysing large datasets—AI alone does not remove the physical and engineering hurdles that have delayed commercial fusion for decades. Researchers and investors acknowledge faster progress in recent years but say robust, peer-reviewed results, long-duration energy gain and scalable engineering solutions will be necessary before fusion becomes a dependable source on power grids.

Wright's timeline sets an ambitious public expectation for a technology that remains under intense study in national laboratories and private firms worldwide. Scientists and energy analysts say independent verification of technical milestones and transparent, cautious assessments of timelines will be important as governments and investors weigh future energy strategies.