DOE Funds UNITY-3 Fusion Breeding Blanket Test Facility at Oak Ridge

On August 13, 2026, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Kyoto Fusioneering announced a DOE-backed $46.9 million investment to build UNITY-3, a first-of-its-kind fusion breeding blanket validation facility in East Tennessee, creating 51 new jobs. Kyoto Fusioneering will relocate its U.S. headquarters to Tennessee to help build and operate the facility, which will house an accelerator generating 14 MeV neutrons — representative of those produced by a burning plasma — to test breeding blanket components under fusion-relevant conditions for the first time. No breeding blanket has ever been validated under real fusion-nuclear conditions; the DOE's Fusion Science & Technology Roadmap identifies this validation gap as a critical national need. The project is backed by Tennessee's Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Investment Fund alongside DOE funding.