Century
Century is a sheared-flow Z-pinch fusion device run by Zap Energy in United States. It is operating. Like every fusion device built so far, it has produced no net electricity.
Started operating as the first fully integrated demonstration of three plant-relevant systems together, at up to 100 kilowatts of input power. That is an engineering integration result rather than a plasma performance one, and the company presents it as such.
A Z-pinch confines plasma with a current driven through the plasma itself and needs no superconducting magnets at all, which would make it far cheaper if it works. The approach was largely abandoned decades ago because the plasma is unstable; Zap's claim is that shearing the flow stabilises it.
| Organisation | Zap Energy |
|---|---|
| Approach | sheared-flow Z-pinch |
| Confinement | magnetic |
| Country | United States |
| Status | Operating |
| First plasma | not yet |
| Target date | none stated |
|---|---|
| Power target | none stated |
| Energy gain target | none stated |
| Net electricity | No. no fusion device has produced any |
Fusion needs tritium, and the world's civilian stock comes mostly from CANDU fission reactors. See the fusion overview.
Century in context
1 of the 24 fusion projects on record use the sheared-flow Z-pinch approach: 1 operating, 0 under construction, 0 planned.
Worked out from the entries on this site only, so a figure compares Century with what is recorded here, not with everything that exists. An entry with no value for a measure is left out of that measure's ranking and median.
Sources
- World Nuclear News, Zap starts up demo fusion power plant system · retrieved 2026-09-07
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data