India's First Private Fusion Tokamak: Pranos Fusion's PRAGYA

In news

• Pranos Fusion, a Bengaluru startup, is taking key steps towards India's first private fusion power reactor.
• It has built PRAGYA, India's first privately built tokamak.
• Its planned full-scale reactor is Praniq, targeted for around 2030, aiming to produce more energy than it consumes.

Key facts

Item	Detail
Company	Pranos Fusion, Bengaluru (incubated at JNCASR)
Device	PRAGYA: a compact test tokamak
Purpose	Test plasma control and in-house magnets
Next step	Praniq: a net-gain fusion reactor (target around 2030)

• PRAGYA heats hydrogen isotopes into plasma. It is a test bed; it does not yet produce fusion energy.

Fusion vs fission

Fusion	Fission
Light nuclei join (hydrogen isotopes)	Heavy nuclei split (uranium, plutonium)
Powers the Sun and stars	Used in today's nuclear power plants
Fuel: deuterium (from seawater) and tritium	Fuel: uranium, thorium
Very little long-lived radioactive waste	Long-lived radioactive waste
No chain reaction, so no meltdown risk	Chain reaction must be controlled
Not yet commercial	Commercial since the 1950s

What is a tokamak?

• A doughnut-shaped machine that holds plasma using strong magnetic fields.
• Plasma must reach over 100 million °C for fusion. No material can touch it, so magnets keep it away from the walls.
• Developed first in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. "Tokamak" is a Russian acronym.

India's fusion programme

• Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar, under the Department of Atomic Energy.
• Aditya: India's first tokamak (1989); now upgraded as Aditya-U.
• SST-1: Steady State Superconducting Tokamak, using superconducting magnets.

ITER

• International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, being built at Cadarache, France.
• Seven members: EU, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA.
• India joined in 2005. India supplied the cryostat, ITER's largest single component.
• Full deuterium-tritium fusion is expected by 2039.

Why it matters

• Fusion promises clean, almost limitless energy with abundant fuel.
• Supports India's net zero by 2070 goal.
• Shows a growing role for private startups in strategic technology, as in space.

Challenges

• Sustaining plasma long enough to get net energy gain.
• Very high cost and long timelines.
• Tritium is scarce and must be bred inside the reactor.
• Materials that can withstand intense heat and neutron damage.

Exam relevance: UPSC Prelims, GS-3 (Science and Technology, Energy); TGPSC, APPSC (Science and Technology).