Shanghai's Superconductor Bet Aims to Power the Fusion Boom
On the eastern edge of Shanghai, a cluster of new buildings has just been completed. The company behind them, Shanghai Superconductor Technology, marked its fifteenth anniversary on October 18 by announcing that its second-generation high-temperature superconducting tape and headquarters base has fully topped out. Construction is giving way to production-line assembly and equipment testing.
The third phase of the site, in Pudong, is planned for an annual capacity of 15,000 kilometers of tape in a 12mm width. Once it ramps up, the company’s total capacity is expected to reach 20,000 kilometers a year. That would place it first worldwide in the specialized field of second-generation high-temperature superconducting tape, according to the company. The project is listed as a major Shanghai construction project for 2025.
Superconductors are materials that carry electricity with zero resistance when cooled below a critical temperature. High-temperature versions, which work at relatively warmer (though still very cold) conditions, can carry enormous currents in a thin ribbon, making them attractive wherever space and weight matter. The most visible use is in magnets for experimental fusion reactors, the machines that try to replicate the sun’s energy process on Earth. They are also used in medical imaging, particle accelerators, power cables and fault-current limiters.
Shanghai has been building a reputation as a fusion hub. Several private and state-backed fusion ventures are based in and around the city, and a dense supply chain of magnet makers, cryogenics specialists and materials firms has grown up alongside them. Reliable, high-volume tape supply has long been a bottleneck for the industry: labs can buy small quantities, but building a commercial reactor demands kilometers of consistent material. The new plant is aimed squarely at that gap.
Globally, the superconducting tape market has been dominated by a handful of producers in Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Chinese firms have been catching up quickly, helped by domestic demand from fusion startups and grid pilot projects. Shanghai Superconductor says its expansion will move it into large-scale industrial manufacturing, a shift from what has largely been lab-scale and pilot production.
The timing reflects a broader surge of interest in fusion. Investors have poured money into private fusion companies worldwide, and governments have funded demonstration plants. None of these efforts has yet produced net electricity, and timelines remain uncertain. But the suppliers of components, from magnets to lasers, are already booking orders, and capacity announcements like this one are a bet that the demand will be real.
For Shanghai, the project fits a wider push to anchor advanced manufacturing in the city, alongside semiconductors, biotech and electric vehicles. The company has not disclosed a start date for full production or the cost of the expansion. What is clear is that the race to build the hardware for fusion, and for a more efficient electricity grid, now runs through a stretch of Pudong.