Roundtable Discussion | 24 August 2026 | Jio Institute, Navi Mumbai
For decades, the central question surrounding fusion energy was scientific: Can we recreate and sustain the power of the sun on Earth?
At the Jio Institute-ITER roundtable, the question had fundamentally changed.
As plasma physics milestones validate the underlying science, an urgent engineering and knowledge-translation challenge is emerging: how do we bridge fundamental experimental physics and large-scale industrial execution—and how can academic and industrial institutions co-create the intellectual property, material standards, and specialized workforce required to make commercial fusion viable?
This question shaped the special session on "Engineering, Industry, and India's Emerging Role in the Global Fusion Ecosystem," convened at Jio Institute, Navi Mumbai. Organised as part of the Institute's initiative to build advanced academic and research capabilities in Energy Science and Engineering, the roundtable brought together leaders from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Reliance Industries, research institutions, and India's heavy engineering sector.
Delegates included senior representatives, researchers, and technical specialists from L&T, Tata Power, Tata Consultancy Engineers, INOX India, CSIR-NCL, and Bhukhanvala Industries.
Beyond the Physics: Precision Engineering and Systems Integration
The session opened with an address by Dr Sergio Orlandi, Deputy Director General at ITER, who oversees Central Engineering and Plant.
Drawing on over three decades of large-scale nuclear execution, Dr Orlandi outlined ITER’s current assembly milestones and operational evolution. He argued that fusion has outgrown purely theoretical horizons; its primary bottlenecks are now deeply rooted in precision manufacturing, complex systems integration, and project discipline.
Iterative improvements in assembly strategy, modular contracting, advanced welding, and early defect testing have significantly enhanced cost and schedule management. However, monumental engineering frontiers remain: managing extreme heat fluxes, manufacturing neutron-resistant and plasma-facing components, perfecting tritium breeding, mitigating plasma disruptions, and executing high-precision remote robotics in active environments. The operating mandate is clear: fusion requires a culture of learning-by-doing-testing, where engineering risks are surfaced and solved before final deployment.
Regulation and Industrial Participation: Fission vs. Fusion
The dialogue then turned to the institutional, commercial, and regulatory frameworks required to scale fusion.
A major consensus emerged around regulation: fusion cannot simply adopt safety, licensing, and compliance frameworks built for nuclear fission. Because fusion processes are inherently non-runaway and produce no long-lived high-level waste, regulators and industry bodies must co-design dedicated, risk-appropriate safety frameworks that foster innovation without compromising integrity.
Industry leaders and scientists—joined by Dr Biswanath Sarkar, Scientist at ITER—reflected on India's substantial contributions to date, spanning large-scale cryogenics, heavy vessel fabrication, and precision materials. The assembly called for Indian industry to move beyond component fabrication, urging domestic firms to co-develop intellectual property and build specialized manufacturing capabilities across cryogenics, novel alloys, and plasma-facing technologies.
Moving from Component Fabrication to System Leadership
For Jio Institute, the roundtable reflects an academic and industrial ambition to anchor emerging energy engineering.
Participants highlighted that technology, manufacturability, and economics can no longer be treated separately. To build commercial power plants, engineering cost reductions must develop in tandem with scientific validation. India's deep manufacturing base, world-class computational expertise, and engineering talent place it in a unique position to evolve from an international supplier into a central engineering hub for global clean tech.
One Room. One Common Frontier.
Across technical updates and strategic exchanges, the roundtable approached fusion not as distant science, but as an urgent industrial mobilization.
The fundamental takeaway was unmistakable.
Plasma physics has demonstrated what is possible, but industry, materials science, and advanced manufacturing must deliver what is practical. Developing clean, limitless baseload power will not belong to physicists alone—it will belong to the engineers who construct, weld, cool, and regulate the machines that hold the sun.