Request for Information (RFI): Enabling Technologies for Improving Fusion Power Plant Performance and Availability | DE FOA 0002874

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002874

The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) issued this Request for Information (RFI), DE-FOA-0002874, to gather input that could shape a future ARPA-E research and development program on enabling technologies for fusion power plants. It is strictly an information-gathering notice, not a funding opportunity, and it is not accepting applications for financial assistance. In other words, there is no award money attached (award ceiling is $0 and expected awards are $0); the goal is to collect technical and programmatic feedback from the community to help ARPA-E decide whether and how to structure a later funding program.

The RFI is framed around two big themes that ARPA-E sees as central to making fusion commercially viable: (A) improving fusion power plant performance and (B) increasing fusion power plant availability. ARPA-E emphasizes its mission of funding applied R&D that can translate scientific advances into high-impact energy technologies, and it positions this RFI as a continuation of lessons and remaining gaps after its earlier fusion-focused efforts, including ALPHA (Accelerating Low-Cost Plasma Heating and Assembly), BETHE (Breakthroughs Enabling THermonuclear-fusion Energy), and GAMOW (Galvanizing Advances in Market-Aligned Fusion for an Overabundance of Watts). The underlying message is that, despite progress, key technical and economic bottlenecks still stand between promising fusion demonstrations and power plants that can run reliably, produce affordable electricity, and be deployed at meaningful scale.

On the performance side, the RFI highlights the importance of improving the efficiency of the systems used to create and sustain fusion conditions. For magnetic fusion energy (MFE) concepts, that means higher wall-plug efficiency (WPE) in plasma heating and current-drive systems. For laser inertial fusion energy (IFE) concepts, it means higher WPE in the driver lasers. Increasing WPE matters economically because it reduces "recirculating power" (the fraction of generated power that must be fed back into the plant to operate the heaters/lasers and supporting systems). Lower recirculating power increases the net electricity delivered to the grid and is directly tied to lowering the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). For IFE specifically, ARPA-E calls out an additional manufacturing and operations challenge: the need to produce extremely large numbers of low-cost, high-performance fusion targets (on the order of millions per day) that are compatible with the selected laser approach and can survive high-speed injection into the target chamber without damage or performance loss. This puts target design, target fabrication cost, quality control, and injection survivability in the category of enabling technologies that can make or break an IFE plant's economics.

On the availability side, the RFI focuses heavily on materials, particularly the harsh environment faced by plasma-facing components and structural materials in a fusion power plant (FPP). ARPA-E notes that there is not currently a satisfactory plasma-facing material solution that can tolerate the expected combination of intense heat loads, neutron flux, and particle bombardment without unacceptable erosion, melting, or rapid degradation. Frequent replacement of damaged components would drive downtime and maintenance costs, reducing plant availability and undermining economic competitiveness. Beyond plasma-facing surfaces, the RFI also stresses the need for improved structural materials that maintain reliability and long service life under neutron irradiation. It specifically points to transmutation (changes in nuclide composition caused by neutron interactions) and activation (the creation of radioactive isotopes) as critical design constraints for fusion structural materials, since these effects influence lifetime, safety, maintenance practices, and waste handling.

A key part of the RFI's vision is speeding up the materials discovery and qualification cycle through autonomous or accelerated discovery approaches. ARPA-E signals interest in leveraging data-driven and closed-loop methods that combine high-throughput synthesis and characterization with machine learning and automation. The intent is to reduce the time required to identify promising compositions, process routes, and microstructures; rapidly test them under relevant conditions; learn from results; and iterate quickly, rather than relying on slow, serial materials development pipelines. Enabling technologies for high-throughput fabrication, rapid testing, advanced characterization, and integrated data systems are implicitly part of what ARPA-E is trying to probe with this RFI, since they can compress timelines for discovering and refining materials suitable for fusion environments.

Administratively, the RFI was created on October 21, 2022, with responses due by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on November 21, 2022. Responses were to be submitted as PDFs via email to ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning any type of entity could provide input, subject to any details in the full RFI text. Although the listing includes "Cooperative Agreement" as a funding instrument type, that reflects the general category ARPA-E often uses for funded programs and does not change the fact that this specific notice is an RFI only and does not award funding. The full RFI details were made available through ARPA-E's FOA site at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov.

• The Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy in the opportunity zone benefits, science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Request for Information (RFI): Enabling Technologies for Improving Fusion Power Plant Performance and Availability" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.135.
• This funding opportunity was created on Oct 21, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Nov 21, 2022 Reponses to this RFI should be submitted in PDF format to the email address ARPA-E-RFI@hq.doe.gov by 500 p.m. Eastern Time on 11/21/2022. For further instruction, please review the RFI in its entirety at https://apra-e-foa.energy.gov.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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