Realta Fusion will use the site of the former Oscar Mayer plant in Madison to scale up its R&D efforts, keeping it on track to build a commercial nuclear fusion plant by the mid-2030s.
That’s according to company CEO Kieran Furlong, who discussed the company’s plans to set up its corporate headquarters and fusion research facility at OM Station in a recent interview. He says the new site offers more space to expand on its prior work done at UW-Madison while meeting the greater power demand of the company’s next development phase.
“We have made great progress in terms of plasma performance, demonstrating what we intend to do with fusion energy on that machine, but we need to scale up,” Furlong told WisBusiness. “We need to build a larger machine, and that will be the ultimate goal that we have at the Realta Forge.”
State officials yesterday rolled out details for the project, which is backed with a $55 million incentive package, including newly available state tax exemptions, performance-based tax credits from WEDC and support from the city. Of that total, the company says $37.5 million comes from state sales and use tax exemptions that were signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers in April.
“I think it’s a fantastic move by the state to show that they’re open for business for the nascent fusion industry,” Furlong said, adding “we really see that Wisconsin has massive potential to be a fusion hub … I think we’re likely going to be the first company to benefit from that bill with this project.”
Gov. Tony Evers touted the project as a way to boost the state’s efforts around carbon-free electricity, saying “we are getting closer every day to making fusion power part of our energy infrastructure” in Wisconsin. Nuclear energy from traditional fission plants currently makes up 16% of the state’s energy generation.
Another $15 million in the incentive package comes from performance-based enterprise zone tax credits authorized by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which the company can obtain by hitting certain job creation and capital expenditure targets, Furlong said.
To satisfy the jobs requirement, Realta Fusion plans to create 600 jobs over five years. Furlong declined to disclose the exact capital expenditure requirement for the tax credits, though he said it will range in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We definitely have grand ambitions to be a large company,” Furlong said, noting the business currently employs about 50 people but plans to hire more quickly.
The final $2.8 million in incentives is in the form of tax increment financing from the city.
Realta Fusion’s decision to stay in Wisconsin came after a nationwide search, assessing “pockets of expertise” across the country as well as competing incentive offers from other states. Furlong said Madison Gas & Electric has been supportive during the site selection process, noting the importance of power availability for the company’s ultimate decision.
The site will use about 20 megawatts of power, which Furlong said is representative of typical industrial buildings of this size. Still, he noted it’s a “significant power draw” for the Realta Forge facility and its “Hammir” prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine.
Another draw to Wisconsin was the company’s existing ties to UW-Madison, which houses the WHAM — or Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror — prototype plasma fusion device. Because of OM Station’s proximity to the university, the company can continue working with the same team at UW-Madison for the next phase.
Still, while the link to the university was a “major positive,” Furlong said the incentive package from the state and city “definitely helped tip the balance” for its final decision to remain in Madison.
“This is a really significant investment by the state and the city, it’s a significant signal of support,” he said.
