Avalanche Energy picks Tri-Cities for fusion manufacturing

The site search for Avalanche’s fusion manufacturing facility runs through a TRIDEC request for information

(Image courtesy of Avalanche Energy)

Avalanche Energy has selected Washington’s Tri-Cities to advance development of its first global fusion machine manufacturing facility, which would operate near FusionWERX, the Richland test facility where its deuterium-tritium test programme is planned. A strategic engagement letter with the Tri-City Development Council covers site selection, permitting, infrastructure readiness, supply chain development and workforce, for a facility envisioned first as a prototype production site and expected to grow to hundreds of machines a year.

TRIDEC leads the site search

TRIDEC will coordinate with its jurisdictional partners to identify the most suitable location, and it intends to issue a request for information to its economic development partners that evaluates candidate sites against infrastructure, workforce, transportation, utility and development requirements. The selection of the Tri-Cities followed a nationwide evaluation of multiple industrial and technology hubs.

Proximity to FusionWERX ties research, prototyping and commercial manufacturing together in one region, and rail and barge networks would give the facility the logistics to serve customers in North American and global markets. The Tri-Cities also gives access to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University Tri-Cities.

FusionWERX links testing to fusion manufacturing

FusionWERX, announced last year in Richland, is being built out to handle the testing side. The commercial-scale facility occupies a Port of Benton building that formerly held a Kurion modular detritiation prototype facility previously licensed for tritium operations, and the plans include Orbitron-based neutron sources spanning 14.1 megaelectron volts down to thermal energies, blanket and shielding test beds, hot cells and integrated tritium management systems.

FusionWERX is expected to operate under a broad-scope radioactive materials licence and is intended to host Avalanche’s deuterium-tritium test programme, and the company’s stated timeline for net fusion energy gain, or Q>1, is before 2030.

Washington’s Department of Commerce put $10 million behind the project through its Green Jobs Grant Program in July last year, covering approximately 12 skilled positions and first-generation neutron-handling equipment. Avalanche’s $29 million round in February, led by RA Capital Management, supplied the private match and will go primarily into scaling FusionWERX.

Jyn shows the iteration approach

The approach underpinning Avalanche’s commercialisation plans is the one it described in June, when it reported measured apparent ion temperatures above 1 keV, roughly 11 million degrees Celsius, in Jyn, a compact fusion plasma device under five inches in diameter. Jyn had been through more than 25 iterations since it was first built in autumn 2025.

Building and testing small machines in quick succession, and carrying lessons from each into the next, is how Avalanche aims to speed progress and cut costs, and it presents the result as a step toward manufacturable fusion systems. The readings came from calibrated optical emission spectrometers along five lines of sight and are documented in a technical report that an independent technical advisor reviewed.

Fusion manufacturing work runs in parallel

TRIDEC’s request for information will shape the site search, while Avalanche and the council work on permitting roadmaps, infrastructure readiness, regional supply chain development and the specialised workforce pipelines needed to support future growth, and FusionWERX continues toward full licensing.

As production scales, Avalanche anticipates hundreds of long-term skilled and unskilled jobs and billions of dollars in annual economic output, with modular machines targeting 100 kilowatts and 5 megawatts and a facility expected to reach hundreds of units a year.

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