Pacific Fusion to Build Albuquerque Plant for Nuclear Weapons Testing

China’s nuclear buildup and expired treaty coincide with US weapons modernization

Pacific Fusion, a three-year-old startup backed by roughly $1 billion in venture capital, broke ground this month in Albuquerque, N.M., on a nuclear-fusion facility designed to subject U.S. weapons components to the conditions of a nuclear detonation without producing an explosion, The Wall Street Journal reported. The facility, when completed by the end of the decade, would produce more than 1,000 times the fusion power of the existing government-operated machine that has served weapons experiments since the United States halted underground nuclear blasts in 1992.

The system generates its energy by linking 156 shipping-container-sized modules, each emitting pulses of energy, built at the company’s San Leandro, Calif., factory. According to the Journal, fusion-reactor testing allows scientists to expose weapons parts to intense heat, radiation and pressure — temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius — without producing an actual detonation. Using supercomputers and artificial intelligence, researchers gather data on how weapons components hold up, how a warhead will perform and what changes would make it more reliable, more precise or deadlier.

At the groundbreaking, Keith LeChien, Pacific Fusion’s chief technology officer, framed the project as a response to China’s rapid fusion development. “We’re watching what China’s doing and how fast they’re going in fusion,” he said. “We’re staying ahead of that.” LeChien said he expects the Albuquerque facility to be the world’s first to produce high-yield fusion; a Chinese state-backed fusion facility with similar power potential is set to break ground this month, the Journal reported.

The project aligns with the Trump administration’s goal of maintaining and modernizing nuclear weapons that have been in storage for decades and designing new ones — work the Journal described as “anathema to prior administrations.” The administration has reversed Obama-era prohibitions on pursuing new nuclear warheads or capabilities. The New START Treaty, which had constrained Russian and U.S. nuclear weapons development, expired in February without a replacement, and no arms-control agreement exists with China.

The geopolitical backdrop has grown more fraught, according to outside analysts quoted by the Journal. Russia retains the world’s largest arsenal at roughly 4,400 weapons to the U.S.’s roughly 3,700. China has tripled its stockpile in a decade to around 650 weapons, built 320 new missile-launching sites in the desert and is constructing research centers that analysts say will be more advanced than U.S. national labs’ ignition facility. Just over a month before the groundbreaking, China test-fired a submarine ballistic missile with a dummy nuclear warhead with the capacity to reach the United States from Chinese coastal waters.

“We are entering now a very complex time where we have to be postured to deter two near-peer adversaries,” said Paul Dean, vice president of the nuclear policy program at Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington nonprofit that works on reducing nuclear threats. “Without some guardrails around those relationships, we have the potential to have an unregulated arms race,” Dean added. “It’s starting to become a pretty dangerous era.”

Sam Wurzel, a fusion-energy researcher who formerly worked for the Energy Department and attended the Albuquerque event, said of the site: “Yes, this is a good start. But at the end of the day, China has serious industrial capacity and industrial policy around fusion.”

The United States has accused Beijing of surreptitiously performing experiments that violate a global testing treaty the two nations have signed but not ratified. President Trump, in a Truth Social post in October, said that if adversaries are flouting rules around weapons testing, the U.S. ought not be restrained. Energy Department officials have said they do not want to resume underground blasts; absent that, fusion-reactor testing provides the most valuable data.

Brandon Williams, NNSA administrator, told the Journal that his office is focused on continuing to provide new strategic weapons options for the president, including novel designs. “Deterrence is never static. It’s what our adversaries are doing that drives us to push us forward,” Williams said. “We have to keep moving.” A White House official said Trump wants to engage China in arms-control talks. The Defense Department did not comment.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Chang, called on the U.S. to “make drastic and substantive cuts to its nuclear arsenal” and stop using threats as a pretext for a weapons buildup. “China never engages in a nuclear arms race with any country,” Liu said. “Our efforts to modernize our nuclear forces are intended to safeguard national strategic security and uphold global strategic stability.”

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the United States has “swung back to what is fundamentally a revitalized nuclear-weapons production enterprise.” “There is no limitation on what you can do now,” he said.

The Journal reported that Pentagon policy official Elbridge Colby has called for more small-blast nuclear weapons as part of a new strategy; the Navy is working on its first tactical nuclear warhead since the 1980s; and Energy Department scientists are preparing for the possibility of conducting new experiments that will mirror China’s.

The broader private-fusion sector has drawn significant capital. Pacific Fusion’s roughly $1 billion in venture backing makes it one of the better-funded entrants, and PitchBook data cited by the Journal show $2.2 billion has been invested in nuclear fusion so far in 2026. Last year, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the president’s social-media platform, merged with nuclear-fusion company TAE Technologies in a $6 billion deal; TAE has said it would break ground on its first commercial fusion plants this year, though no date has been set.

This year’s draft defense-spending bills from both the House and Senate call for NNSA to partner with private companies to advance its nuclear weapons work, building on a similar effort last year, the Journal reported. High-yield fusion remains a critical threshold for weapons testing; producing a viable commercial energy system capable of powering neighborhoods or cities — which Pacific Fusion is also pursuing — is expected to take several more years.