Type One Energy gets Tennessee’s first fusion license under new state rules

The document Type One Energy’s Pascal Dumont holds is the first instance of an Agreement State’s general fusion authority converted into an actual operating license

(Image courtesy of Type One Energy)

Tennessee has issued the United States’ first fusion-specific operating license, authorising Type One Energy to proceed with Project Infinity at TVA‘s former Bull Run coal site in Clinton. The license was granted under a purpose-built regulatory chapter the state introduced in June, not under the general Agreement State authority dozens of states already hold. Broad federal delegation has converted into a usable licensing pathway for the first time anywhere in the country.

What Tennessee’s fusion license authorises

TDEC’s Division of Radiological Health issued Type One Energy a byproduct material license specifically for fusion machines, the first granted under Chapter 0400-20-14 of the state’s Effective Rules and Regulations. The chapter, which took effect in June, establishes licensing requirements for fusion machines and fusion-related activities under a technology-neutral framework. Type One Energy and TVA worked with TDEC to prepare the application, which the company first submitted in January.

The license covers Type One’s commercial site at TVA’s former Bull Run Energy Complex, where the company plans to build Project Infinity in phases. The first phase, Infinity One, is a prototype and workforce training facility; Infinity Two is forecast as a 400 MWe stellarator power plant, up from the 350 MWe figure in the original January application. Construction on the first phase is expected to begin this year, with full startup targeted for 2034.

The regulatory path behind the license

Tennessee could move this quickly because it is one of 39 NRC Agreement States, jurisdictions with delegated federal authority to regulate byproduct, source, and special nuclear materials under Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act. The NRC voted in April 2023 to regulate fusion machines under the existing byproduct materials framework rather than build a separate regime for fusion, and the 2024 ADVANCE Act wrote that classification into the Atomic Energy Act’s definition of byproduct material.

That decision handed most day-to-day fusion licensing to states rather than the NRC itself. Several Agreement States, including Massachusetts for Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC facility, have already engaged fusion developers under this general authority. Tennessee’s contribution is narrower and more concrete: it is the first state to translate that authority into a dedicated fusion licensing chapter and then issue a license under it, rather than handling fusion machines case by case within existing radioactive-materials rules.

Application to license in seven months

Type One Energy and TVA submitted the initial licensing application in January, roughly seven months before TDEC issued the license. TVA has separately issued Type One Energy a letter of intent to develop Infinity Two, with construction potentially starting as early as 2028 pending completion of further development work.

The Bull Run site itself carries regulatory continuity that likely helped the timeline. It is a former fossil generation facility already inside TVA’s operating footprint, with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee named as campus partners. For a first-of-a-kind licensing process, a brownfield energy site with existing utility and federal-lab relationships removes several siting variables a greenfield location would introduce.

What the license model means for other states

TDEC Commissioner David Salyers described the framework as intended to serve as “a model for other states,” and Type One Energy CEO Christofer Mowry called Tennessee’s process “the international benchmark” for fusion plant safety-by-design licensing. Neither claim is yet tested against a second state issuing a comparable license, and no public reporting so far points to another state drafting an equivalent fusion-specific chapter. For developers and investors evaluating siting decisions elsewhere, Chapter 0400-20-14 is now the only working example of what an Agreement State’s general fusion authority looks like once converted into an actual license, and it is the reference point other jurisdictions will be measured against.

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