Tag Archives: Power Reactor Demonstration Program

First generation of electric power from a fusion machine reported – The light bulbs have been lit; now what?

All Posts, Fusion, Power Generating Technology - Fusion, Power Generating Technology - Nuclear,

Peter Lobner, 22 July 2026

In a 30 June 2026 press release, Realta Fusion announced that their direct energy conversion fusion machine had demonstrated that it could generate electric power and deliver that power to a connected load, in this case a series of electric light bulbs.  You can read the press release here.

There’s more information on the Realta Fusion website here.   

So, how soon might we expect electric power to be delivered from a fusion power plant to the commercial electric grid? Perhaps we can get some insights from a similar milestone at an early nuclear reactor and the following timeline for the deployment and scale-up of commercial nuclear power plants.

The Realta Fusion event is on the scale of a similar event at EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, a sodium-cooled fast reactor at Idaho National Engineering Lab), when it successfully generated electric power from nuclear fuel for the first time and lit four 200-watt lightbulbs 75 years ago, on 20 December 1951. You’ll find details of this historic event here.

In the decades following this EBR-1 nuclear electric power milestone, many different commercial power reactor types were built and began operation.  The first 1,000 MWe-scale commercial nuclear power plant didn’t come on line in the U.S. for more than two decades.  

Here a few of the nuclear power intermediate milestones on the timeline between the first nuclear electric power generated in 1951 and the first commissioned 1,000 MWe nuclear power plant in 1974.

  • 1955: Four years after the EBR-1 demonstration, Arco, ID, (population 1,000) became the first U.S. town temporarily powered by nuclear energy. The power was generated by an experimental boiling water reactor, BORAX III, at Idaho National Engineering Lab and delivered via a temporary transformer on 17 July 1955.
  • 1957: Atomics International’s 6.5 MW Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE, sodium cooled graphite reactor) became the first nuclear reactor in the United States to (temporarily) deliver electrical power via a commercial power grid to supply the nearby city of Moorpark, CA on 12 July 1957.
  • 1957: The first full-scale nuclear power plant, Duquesne Light Company’s Shippingport Atomic Power Station, which was supported by the U.S. Navy’s Naval Nuclear Power Program, delivered electric power to grid for the first time on 18 December 1957, initially producing 60 MWe and later upgraded to 150 MWe.
  • 1957 to 1963: General Electric’s Vallecitos Boiling Water Reactor (VBWR) was the first privately owned and operated nuclear power plant to deliver significant quantities of electricity to a public utility grid. During the period October 1957 to December 1963, it delivered approximately 40,000 megawatt-hours of electricity.
  • 1961: The Westinghouse 3 MWe Saxton Nuclear Generating Station was commissioned in Pennsylvania. This was a single-loop PWR. 
  • 1960 to 1968: The 13 small to medium size commercial power reactors (rated from 17  to 560 MWe) listed in the following table were commissioned under the Atomic Energy Commission’s Power Reactor Demonstration Program. The Dresden Generating Station (Dresden 1) was the first privately financed nuclear power plant built in the U.S. Of the several reactor types demonstrated under this AEC program, only PWR  and BWR designs evolved into the later large commercial power reactors delivered by U.S. manufacturers Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering, Babcock & Wilcox and General Electric and by many international reactor manufacturers.

  • 1963: Pacific Gas & Electric’s 63 MWe Humboldt Bay Unit 3 was commissioned in California. While characterized as a General Electric BWR/1, it was substantially different than the Big Rock Point plant.
  • 1969: General Electric’s second BWR model (a BWR/2) at Oyster Creek was commissioned by Commonwealth Edison at a rated power of 636 MWe.
  • 1970: General Electric’s third BWR model (a BWR/3), Dresden Unit 2, was commissioned by General Public Utilities at a rated power of 894 MWe.
  • 1970: The first 2-loop Westinghouse PWR, R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, was commissioned by Rochester Gas & Electric at a rated power of 580 MWe.
  • 1974: The first 1,000 MWe nuclear plant went into service. This was Commonwealth Edison’s Zion Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 1, a 4-loop Westinghouse PWR.                                     

Going back to the beginning of the nuclear power milestone list, the first milestone after the lightbulb event is to demonstrate (temporarily) electrical power delivery to a nearby town.  That event occurred about 3-1/2 years (1,305 days) after the lightbulbs were lit for the first time by nuclear power.

Since 30 June 2026, the clock has been ticking for the fusion power industry. Their 1,305 day target is 25 January 2030. Who knows? With big venture capital investments, lots of hard work, and more than a little good luck, one or more of the many fusion power machines under development may be able to achieve this milestone.