• Announcement comes less than one year after country shut down its last commercial nuclear fission plants
• ‘We must not miss this huge opportunity,’ says minister

Germany wants to build a “nuclear fusion ecosystem” made up of industry, startups and science so that a fusion power plant in the country becomes a reality as quickly as possible with a target of having a reactor in operation by 2040 – potentially making it among the first in Europe.

Launching a new funding programme ‘Fusion 2040 – Research on the way to a fusion power plant’ on 13 March, federal research minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger said: “The global race is on. I would like us in Germany to be among the first to build a fusion power plant. We must not miss this huge opportunity, especially with a view to growth and prosperity.”

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) said it has long been supporting fusion research at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching and Greifswald, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Research Centre Jülich.

This institutional funding is now being supplemented by a second pillar with the new funding programme.