The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and Office of Science–Fusion Energy Sciences (SC-FES) are overseeing a joint program, Galvanizing Advances in Market-aligned fusion for an Overabundance of Watts (GAMOW). ARPA-E will contribute up to $15 million in funding over a three-year program period, and FES will contribute up to $5 million per year for three years for qualifying technologies. GAMOW will prioritize R&D in (1) technologies and subsystems between the fusion plasma and balance of plant, (2) cost-effective, high-efficiency, high-duty-cycle driver technologies, and (3) cross-cutting areas such as novel fusion materials and advanced and additive manufacturing for fusion-relevant materials and components. Applicants should leverage and build on foundational SC-FES research programs in fusion materials, fusion nuclear science, plasma-materials interactions, and other enabling technologies, while ensuring that market-aware techno-economic analyses inform project goals.

Awardees must work toward one or more of the following high-level program objectives:

• Demonstrate substantial progress toward technical feasibility and/or increases in performance compared to the current state of the art in the priority R&D areas.
• Enable significant device simplification or elimination of entire subsystems of commercially motivated fusion energy systems.
• Reduce fusion energy system costs, including those of critical materials and component testing.
• Improve the reliability, safety, and/or environmental attractiveness of fusion energy systems.

For more than 60 years, fusion research and development has focused on attaining the required fuel density, temperature, and energy confinement time required for a viable fusion energy system. To date, relatively modest investments have been made in the enabling technologies and advanced materials needed to sustain a commercially attractive fusion energy system. However, further innovations and advances are required to establish fusion energy’s technical and commercial viability. The GAMOW program supports projects pursuing innovative R&D in fusion-energy subsystems and cross-cutting areas to enable commercially attractive fusion energy within the next several decades.

Successful development of fusion energy science and technology could lead to a safe, carbon-free, abundant energy source for developed and emerging economies.