"Fast ignition" appeared in the late nineties, as part of a push by LLE to build the Omega EP system, which finished in 2008. Fast ignition showed dramatic power savings and moved ICF into the race for energy production. The HiPER experimental facility became dedicated to fast ignition.
In 2001 the United States, China and Republic of Korea joined ITER while Canada withdrew.
In April 2005, a UCLA team announced a way of producing fusion using a machine that "fits on a lab bench", using lithium tantalate to generate enough voltage to fuse deuterium. The process did not generate net power.
The next year, China's EAST test reactor was completed. This was the first tokamak to use superconducting magnets to generate both toroidal and poloidal fields.
In the early 2000s, LANL researchers claimed that an oscillating plasma could reach local thermodynamic equilibrium. This prompted the POPS and Penning trap designs.
In 2005 NIF fired its first bundle of eight beams, achieving the most powerful laser pulse to date - 152.8 kJ (infrared).
MIT researchers became interested in fusors for space propulsion, using fusors with multiple inner cages. Greg Piefer founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs and developed the fusor into a neutron source for medical isotope production. Robert Bussard began speaking openly about the polywell in 2006.
In March 2009, NIF became operational.
In the early 2000s privately backed fusion companies launched to develop commercial fusion power. Tri Alpha Energy, founded in 1998, began by exploring a field-reversed configuration approach. In 2002, Canadian company General Fusion began proof-of-concept experiments based on a hybrid magneto-inertial approach called Magnetized Target Fusion. Investors included Jeff Bezos (General Fusion) and Paul Allen (Tri Alpha Energy). Toward the end of the decade, Tokamak Energy started exploring spherical tokamak devices using reconnection.