LL, Pacific Fusion celebrate opening manufacturing hub

LOS LUNAS — The village of Los Lunas marked a milestone in its economic development strategy with the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Pacific Fusion’s new facility on Friday, Dec. 12.

The innovative fusion energy company has chosen the 200,000-square-foot south end of the former Merillat building, at the north end of Los Morros Business Park, as the site to build components used in its fusion demonstration system.

The Los Lunas facility will serve as the manufacturing hub, or “build center,” for Pacific Fusion’s New Mexico operation. Staff at the facility will build the components for the fusion system, which will be transported to and placed at the company’s research and manufacturing campus at the Mesa Del Sol site, which will be built just south of Albuquerque.

“Just this summer, we were so excited to announce Pacific Fusion,” said Laura Myers-Rackett, director of Technology Innovation and Creative Economic Development for Pacific Fusion in her address to the audience, “and it’s especially thrilling to be here just months later, already moving into a new facility and the work to build our fusion system has already begun.”

Local leadership, including Los Lunas Mayor Charles Griego, championed the project as validation of the village’s sustained economic development efforts.

“I’m happy,” Griego said. “That’s a progression we have to go through. We can’t be satisfied at a certain level. We need to continue to grow. Our community’s growing. Our population’s growing. We need to grow as a community. We’re providing local employment. It’s important that we have local employment.”

Pacific Fusion’s fusion system, which it touts as “both technologically robust and economically viable” on its official website, utilizes an approach known as “pulser-driven inertial fusion.” The process uses fast-rising, high-current pulses to magnetically squeeze and heat small containers of deuterium-tritium fuel, which drives the fuel to fusion conditions.

Myers-Racket said the Los Lunas build center will only be manufacturing the modules that will eventually be assembled at Pacific Fusion’s Mesa del Sol site. She said no actual power will be generated in Los Lunas.

“It’s a relatively light manufacturing operation (in Los Lunas),” she said. “We don’t have heavy water use. We don’t have heavy power use. We’re largely assembling the components of (the fusion) system here. The goal is to build sustainable power systems in service of our long-term mission.”

Economically, the Los Lunas manufacturing facility is expected to create a substantial economic ripple effect, beginning with the planned hiring of about 100 high-paying employees by the end of 2026. Company representatives confirmed the 100 jobs are part of the initial plan and not a hard cap, pointing to potential for further growth.

Myers-Racket cited the availability of the perfectly-sized facility, combined with the “responsive and pro-business attitude” of local officials, including village Senior Economic Developer Victoria Archuleta, as a deciding factor in choosing Los Lunas over other sites Pacific Fusion was considering.

“We needed a 200,000-square-foot facility within a relatively short drive of Mesa del Sol, in an area that had the workforce that could support that work,” Myers-Rackett said. “There aren’t that many of those when you draw, whatever, a 50-mile radius circle, and so Los Lunas was really a perfect fit.”

Archuleta said the effort to bring both the Mesa del Sol facility and the Los Lunas manufacturing hub was a new, unique approach by the village, which approached Albuquerque as a partner rather than an adversary.

“I think there’s a major shift in the way we’re viewing economic development because it used to be like, you know, just like our old school rivalry, you know, Los Lunas and Belen competing against each other,” she said. “Our elected officials and leaders in Los Lunas, Valencia County, all of those who are here today — we’re all on board with the same messaging that we as a region need to be competitive because, Los Lunas and Rio Rancho, we’re not competing against each other.

“We, as the greater Albuquerque Metro, are competing with places like Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mesa, Arizona, and where we all have been able to come together and really push a project like this. It’s just really special. I’m hoping this is just the first of many that’s going to have just a region-wide impact.”

According to a Pacific Fusion press release given out at the ribbon-cutting event, the company’s projects will bring “more than $1.2 billion in statewide economic benefit over the next decade, including $57 million in direct benefits to the state of New Mexico, Bernalillo and Valencia counties, and the cities of Albuquerque and Los Lunas.”

While the Mesa Del Sol site will be the final destination for the first major system, the Los Lunas manufacturing facility is a long-term investment for Pacific Fusion, Myers-Racket said. Currently, the facility is already operational with a small initial staff. It is expected to be in full production by the end of 2026. After manufacturing the components for the first Fusion Demonstration System, the Los Lunas site will continue to serve as the manufacturing hub for all future fusion systems, which will then be assembled at “yet-to-be-selected power plant sites.”

“I would say there’s no expiration date on this facility,” she affirmed. “The first big objective is to build all the modular components that will be in the Fusion Demonstration System at Mesa Del Sol, and thereafter, we have power plants to build.”

During a brief tour of inside build center, Myers-Rackett described the modules built in Los Lunas as weighing “more than most aircraft” and having a footprint of a shipping container.

“It’s a very dense thing, and it produces about two terawatts of peak power over 100 nanoseconds,” she said. “That’s four times more power than the average power in the entire United States electrical grid for that very, very short amount of time.

She emphasized that the build center “can manufacture all of these components in parallel with the construction” of the building at Mesa del Sol, so that “we can then assemble those components in the building without having schedule delays induced by doing those things in series,” she concluded.

The Los Lunas facility will be built out to accommodate assembling four modules at a time, with the facility producing several within a week.

“The first objective of this facility is to produce those 156 modules, to meet that schedule,” she said, “and to have those produced by roughly the end of 2027.”

Pacific Fusion has already begun hiring, with a few positions filled as of last Friday. The company will be holding hiring events throughout 2026, starting in February. Open roles are already posted online now at pacificfusion.com/careers. Updates on the projects in New Mexico can be found at newmexico.pacificfusion.com/.