A New Era in Fusion: AI Can Simulate Plasma Behavior Instantly

Metaverse Planet October 30, 2025Last Updated: October 30, 2025

2 minutes read

Nvidia and General Atomics have developed an AI-powered digital twin for fusion reactors. The new system can perform plasma simulations that previously took weeks in a matter of seconds.

Ensuring the control and stability of plasma remains the most significant obstacle to making fusion energy a more reliable energy source. Since fusion reactions attempt to replicate the processes occurring at the Sun’s core on Earth, keeping plasma, which reaches hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, under control is challenging. For decades, researchers have therefore relied on complex simulations to understand and optimize the behavior of fusion reactors. However, these simulations typically required weeks of supercomputer processing. Now, a breakthrough in artificial intelligence is reducing this time to seconds.

Nvidia and General Atomics introduced the first AI-powered digital twin for fusion reactors yesterday at the Nvidia GTC conference in Washington. This “digital twin” opens the door to a revolutionary era in fusion research by cutting plasma simulation times from weeks to seconds. Raffi Nazikian, Fusion Data Science Lead at General Atomics, states, “We can now test reactor scenarios virtually without the risk of damaging physical equipment. This interactive digital twin is a game-changer in fusion research.” Currently, 700 scientists from 100 different institutions can conduct joint tests and simulations through this platform.

Digital Twin Can Simulate Fusion Reactor Behavior

This digital twin is powered by three different AI surrogate models running on Nvidia GPUs. Of these models, EFIT calculates plasma equilibrium; CAKE predicts the plasma boundaries; and ION ORB forecasts the heat density of escaping ions. Trained on supercomputers such as Polaris at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and Perlmutter at NERSC, these models can simulate complex plasma behavior thousands of times faster compared to physics-based calculations.

The system is built on the Nvidia Omniverse platform. Omniverse combines sensor data, physics-based simulations, engineering models, and AI predictions in a single dynamic environment. This allows researchers to instantly test “what-if” scenarios, optimize reactor designs, and detect potential errors before an experiment.

This AI-powered approach directly addresses the most fundamental problem of fusion energy: the ability to control plasma stability in real time. Results that were previously only obtainable through physics-based simulations lasting weeks can now be calculated in seconds.

Especially considering the rapidly growing energy demand of AI data centers, the need for limitless and clean fusion energy is greater than ever. Therefore, the collaboration between Nvidia and General Atomics may herald a paradigm shift not only in fusion energy research but also in the broader fields of energy science and high-performance computing.