☀️ Germany is dropping €2+ billion to trap the Sun in a box—and it could help reshape the world’s energy system by 2040. Munich’s Proxima Fusion, a Max Planck spin-off, is developing a stellarator with magnetic fields shaped with extraordinary precision to confine plasma at temperatures of millions of degrees. Phase 1: Alpha comes first near Munich in the early 2030s, designed to demonstrate net energy gain. Phase 2: Stellaris is planned for the former Gundremmingen nuclear site in Bavaria, with the goal of putting fusion electricity on the grid in the 2030s. No fossil fuels. No conventional high-level radioactive waste stream from fission. And there’s something almost poetic about the location: A site once built to split atoms could become part of Germany’s effort to fuse them. If the technology works as its developers hope, the energy story of the 2040s could look very different. Source: German Federal Government Fusion Roadmap; Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics; Proxima Fusion