Earlier this month, on 8 May 2026, the Dutch fusion community gathered at DIFFER in Eindhoven for the third edition of Dutch Fusion Day. Around two hundred participants — from VDL on the established-industry side to Somni Solutions on the start-up side, together with TU/e, DIFFER and BigScienceNL as conveners — spent the day asking a single, very practical question: what does the Netherlands need to do, together, to be ready to build, supply, and benefit from fusion reactors?
The framing on the event’s own retrospective page is striking in its bluntness.
I read that line several times. It is, I think, exactly the sentence India’s fusion community needs to internalise — and the reason I believe we should now have an India Fusion Day.
The Netherlands does not have a tokamak the size of SST-1. It does not have an ITER-class fabrication base. What it has is DIFFER, a strong materials and plasma-wall-interactions community at Eindhoven, a handful of serious startups, and an industrial machine-building culture — VDL, ASML’s suppliers, semiconductor precision shops — that is now being courted by Proxima Fusion in Germany, Renaissance Fusion in France, UKFE’s STEP programme in Britain, and IFMIF-DONES in Spain.
What the Dutch organisers did with Dutch Fusion Day is simply this: they put the buyers and the sellers in the same room for one day a year. That is the entire formula — one day, one venue, a tight programme, public materials, and a room engineered for partnership conversations rather than press releases. It works because it is small enough to be honest. Two hundred people cannot do a ribbon-cutting; they can only do business.
When I look at where India is today, I am convinced we have crossed a threshold that justifies — and frankly requires — a convening of the same kind. The SHANTI Act 2025 came into force this December. The IPR fusion roadmap is published. PFBR achieved first criticality at Kalpakkam in April. A real private fusion ecosystem is now visible. This is no longer a community of three labs and one diaspora WhatsApp group. It is a sector. And sectors need a forum.
What would such a forum actually look like in India? What would it do, who would host it, and why must it happen now rather than after SST-Bharat is built? Those are the questions I want to answer next.
A modest, specific proposal
What an “India Fusion Day” would actually do
I want to be specific, because vague proposals die in vague meetings. An India Fusion Day, modelled honestly on the Dutch precedent, should be:
One day. One city. Once a year. I would propose Gandhinagar in the first year — both because IPR is there and because the new private cluster (ASPL Fusion is at IT Tower 1, Infocity, with experimental operations at GIDC Sector 28) is co-located. Rotation to BARC/Mumbai, IIT Madras, or RRCAT Indore in subsequent years.
Roughly 200 participants, deliberately mixed. A working ratio of about one-third public sector (IPR, BARC, DAE, RRCAT, IGCAR, AERB, the CEA committee), one-third private (Indian fusion startups, plus serious enabling industry — L&T Heavy Engineering, Inox, Godrej, TCS, Tata Consulting Engineers, the HTS and cryogenics supply chain), and one-third academic and international partners. The Dutch numbers are not accidental: 200 is the largest room in which everyone can still meet everyone.
Five or six talks, no parallel tracks. The temptation in India will be to inflate this into a three-day jamboree with five plenaries and twenty breakouts. Resist it. The Dutch programme this year had five speakers. That is the right scale.
A genuine supply-chain focus. What can Indian industry already build to fusion-grade tolerances? What must it learn? Where do REBCO/HTS tape, ultra-high-vacuum chambers, beryllium handling, liquid metal loops, tritium systems, and remote-handling robotics sit on our domestic readiness curve? Who will buy them, on what timeline, at what volume? IFMIF-DONES gave a presentation at Eindhoven titled, very simply, “IFMIF-DONES Industrial Opportunities.” We need that talk for SST-Bharat, for INDRA, and for the private-sector programmes that will live alongside them.
Published proceedings, the same week. Decks online, video recordings online, a short retrospective page. The Dutch model of full transparency is not a courtesy; it is what allows the conversation to continue between editions.
No ribbons. No chief-guest culture. I say this with respect for protocol but firmness about purpose. A working forum is not an inauguration. The Dutch retrospective page does not have a single photograph of someone cutting a ribbon. It has photographs of people standing in groups of three and four, talking. That is the deliverable.
Why now, and why not wait
There is a natural Indian instinct to say: let us first build SST-Bharat, let us first have a domestic startup win a major contract, let us first see Phase 1 of PRABHA operational — then we will hold the forum.
I think this is exactly backwards.
The point of a forum like Dutch Fusion Day is not to celebrate what has already been built. It is to decide what to build next, and together. Proxima Fusion’s CTO did not come to Eindhoven to celebrate; he came to find Dutch suppliers. STEP did not come to announce; it came to recruit collaborators. DONES did not come to inform; it came to open procurement conversations.
India today has private capital flowing into deep tech for the first time at meaningful scale. The SHANTI Act has unlocked the legal pathway. The DAE has signalled, through the IPR roadmap and through the very existence of AIC-IPR, that it wants a public–private fusion sector rather than a fully captive one. Industrial groups that built our space and nuclear backbones are looking for the next mission. The supply-chain conversation is the conversation we are not yet having at the right table. An India Fusion Day is that table.
If we wait until 2030, three things will have happened. First, the supply chains will have been shaped — by foreign procurement choices that did not include us, because we were not in the room. Second, the domestic skills base for HTS, tritium, neutronics codes, and remote handling will have aged out of another five-year window. Third, the narrative of Indian fusion will have been written by people who do not work in it.
A modest, specific proposal
I would suggest the following, and I make this offer publicly so it can be taken up:
- Convening host: The Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, with AIC-IPR Plasmatech Innovation Foundation as co-host on the private-sector side. This mirrors the Dutch DIFFER + TU/e + BigScienceNL triad and gives us a public-research anchor, an academic anchor, and an industrial-translation anchor.
- First edition: Q1 2027. One day. Gandhinagar.
- Theme: “From Roadmap to Supply Chain — Building Fusion in India.” Deliberately echoing the Dutch 2026 framing.
- Programme committee: I would gladly serve on it, in a personal capacity, alongside whomever IPR, IIT Gandhinagar, BARC, the CEA committee and the private sector nominate. The composition should be visibly balanced between public and private, with at least one international partner — BINP Novosibirsk and the UKFE STEP team would both be natural early invitees.
- Funding model: Modest sponsorship from industry (the Dutch model), capped per sponsor so that no single voice dominates. No paid speaking slots.
That is essentially it. A small idea, deliberately so.
A closing thought
I have spent a long time in this field — from UC Berkeley/LBL to SINP to IPR to TIFAC, through Technology Vision 2035, and now through ASPL Fusion. The biggest lesson I have absorbed is that technologies do not become industries because individuals are brilliant. They become industries because communities decide, on a recurring basis, to be honest with each other in the same room.
Dutch Fusion Day is a small institution doing a large thing: it is teaching a national fusion community to talk to itself with adult seriousness. India, with a deeper scientific base, a larger industrial base, a newly opened statutory pathway, and a faster-growing private fusion sector, has at least as much reason — and arguably more responsibility — to do the same.
So yes. India should celebrate India Fusion Day.
Not as a ceremony. As a working session.
I hope to see you there.
