Daido Steel Co., Ltd.

Kyoto Fusioneering, Ltd. has begun a joint development program with Daido Steel Co., Ltd. to establish commercial manufacturing technology for low-activation vanadium alloy, one of three candidate structural materials for fusion blankets. Under the program, the two companies have melted and forged a cumulative 200 kg of high-purity vanadium into round bars and plates and are now jointly evaluating the manufacturing and processing technologies required to produce these materials. The first finished material, consisting of 7.3 kg of round bar and 2.6 kg of plate, was completed in August 2026, and approximately 70 kg in total will be delivered to Kyoto Fusioneering, which will machine and join the material and expects to begin fabrication of a blanket mock-up in 2027. The companies said published roadmaps now set targets in the range of 500 kg to one tonne per heat, across multiple heats, to demonstrate industrial qualification, whereas heats of roughly 200 to 1,200 kg were produced in the United States and Japan in the 1990s and early 2000s almost entirely within national programs, with commercial supply never established. Daido Steel's Shigeki Ueta, General Manager of the Corporate Research & Development Center, said establishing mass-production technology for vanadium alloy represents a major technical challenge, while Kyoto Fusioneering Representative Director, President and COO Kiyoshi Seko said combining Daido Steel's materials manufacturing technology with KF's fusion materials expertise has moved blanket development forward.