Fusion reactors: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Fusion power is still experimental, so no market price exists. Its future cost depends on building powerful superconducting magnets, materials that survive neutron damage, tritium bred from lithium, and on how cheap rival clean power becomes.
No public price Fusion reactors has no public monthly price series: No commercial fusion power exists yet; costs are research estimates.What its price moves with
Most designs burn deuterium and tritium. Deuterium comes cheaply from seawater, but tritium is scarce and must be bred inside the reactor, so the fuel cost depends on how well breeding blankets work rather than on any traded price.
No public price for fusion fuels, so the link is explained in words only.Breeding blankets turn lithium, often enriched in lithium-6, into tritium when struck by neutrons. A fleet of fusion plants would add a new use for lithium, competing with batteries for supply, though each plant would need only modest tonnages.
No public price for lithium, so the link is explained in words only.Many magnets use niobium-tin or niobium-titanium superconductors, while newer compact designs use rare earth barium copper oxide tape. Magnets are a large share of a fusion device's cost, so superconductor supply matters more than fuel.
No public price for niobium, so the link is explained in words only.Low-temperature superconducting magnets are cooled with liquid helium, and even high-temperature tapes need cryogenic cooling. Helium is a by-product of a few gas fields, so tight supply and price spikes could raise operating costs for fusion plants.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Tungsten lines the divertor, the part that takes the hottest exhaust heat, because it has the highest melting point of any metal. Supply is concentrated in China, which makes tungsten a strategic input for fusion builders.
No public price for tungsten, so the link is explained in words only.Fusion would compete with fission and other firm low-carbon power. If fission or storage-backed renewables become cheap and quick to build, the cost fusion must reach to win orders falls, which sets the target for developers.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.