IPR Gandhinagar proposes roadmap for India’s fusion power plans

24 SEPTEMBER 2025

Steady-state Superconducting Tokamak-Bharat (SST-Bharat),

Researchers at the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in Gandhinagar have laid out a roadmap for India to achieve fusion power.
They envisage developing India’s first fusion electricity generator, called the Steady-state Superconducting Tokamak-Bharat (SST-Bharat), with a power output 5x the input.
According to the team, it will be a fusion-fission hybrid reactor with 100 MW of the total 130 MW provided by fission.
The estimated construction cost is ₹25,000 crore.
The team ultimately aims to commission a full-scale demonstration reactor by 2060 with an ambitious output-to-input power ratio of 20 and to generate 250 MW.

Fusion Reaction

Fusion is the process where two small, light atoms come together to form a bigger, heavier atom along with release of huge amount of energy.
Nuclear fusion is the reason stars exist and produce heat and light.
For decades, fission reactors have provided the backbone for nuclear power.
Fusion, however, is more attractive than fission because it produces less radioactive waste, eliminating many (but not all) of the costs and headaches of storing hazardous material.
Controlled fusion can only happen in extreme physical conditions, the kinds that exist in the belly of a star.

Two ways for Fusion

There are currently two popular ways to achieve this: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement.
Inertial confinement uses powerful lasers to blast a capsule with X-rays to initiate fusion.
Magnetic confinement works by recreating some of the conditions inside stars.

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project

India is already invested in magnetic confinement as a member of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which is building a large reactor in France.
In this method, scientists heat plasma to 100 million degrees C, then gently guide the nuclei with magnetic fields until they fuse.
To compare, temperatures in the sun’s core reach 15 million degrees C.

Q value

The ratio of the output power to the input, called the Q value, determines efficiency.
“We need Q to be much greater than 1, meaning the reactor gives us more energy than we use to run it.
Right now, the best result has come from the Joint European Torus in the U.K., which got about 0.67, that is, 67% of the energy back.
ITER aims to achieve a Q of 10.
Future fusion power plants are expected to achieve a value of 20 to be commercially feasible.

Tokomak

The doughnut-shaped reactor vessel in which fusion happens is called a tokamak.
Its success is measured by how long it can hold the plasma together without dissipating.
In February 2025, the WEST tokamak in France maintained plasma for a record 22 minutes.
The current state-of-the-art facility in India is the SST-1 tokamak at IPR. According to Raju, “It has managed to produce plasma for about 650 milliseconds, and it is designed to go up to 16 minutes.”
SST-1 is a research machine and not meant to generate electricity.
SST-Bharat is presented as the next step beyond this experimental base.

Global fusion initiatives

The U.K.’s STEP programme aims for a prototype fusion plant by 2040.
Several U.S. private firms claim they will demonstrate grid-connected fusion as early as the 2030s.
China’s EAST tokamak has already set records for plasma duration.
India’s target of 2060 places it on a longer path — one that may be less competitive but more cautious.
Within India’s wider energy policy, fusion also competes with pressing commitments: net zero by 2070, major expansions in solar and wind, and a long-standing nuclear fission programme.