In addition to the competition to develop commercial quantum computing, there’s the competition to develop commercial nuclear fusion energy. I have four stories about nuclear fusion, one from Spain, one from Chine, one from the US, and one from Vancouver. There are also a couple of segues into history and the recently (April 2, 2025) announced US tariffs (chaos has since ensued as these have become ‘on again/off again’ tariffs) but the bulk of this posting is focused on the latest (January – early April 2025) in fusion energy.
Fission nuclear energy, where atoms are split, is better known; fusion nuclear energy is released when a star is formed. For anyone unfamiliar with the word tokamak as applied to nuclear fusion (which is mentioned in all the stories), you can find out more in the Tokamak Wikipedia entry.
In a pioneering approach to achieve fusion energy, the SMART device has successfully generated its first tokamak plasma. This step brings the international fusion community closer to achieving sustainable, clean, and virtually limitless energy through controlled fusion reactions.
The SMART tokamak, a state-of-the-art experimental fusion device designed, constructed and operated by the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory of the University of Seville, is a worldwide unique spherical tokamak due to its flexible shaping capabilities. SMART has been designed to demonstrate the unique physics and engineering properties of Negative Triangularity shaped plasmas towards compact fusion power plants based on Spherical Tokamaks.
Prof. Manuel García Muñoz, Principal Investigator of the SMART tokamak, stated: “This is an important achievement for the entire team as we are now entering the operational phase of SMART. The SMART approach is a potential game changer with attractive fusion performance and power handling for future compact fusion reactors. We have exciting times ahead! Prof. Eleonora Viezzer, co-PI of the SMART project, adds: “We were all very excited to see the first magnetically confined plasma and are looking forward to exploiting the capabilities of the SMART device together with the international scientific community. SMART has awoken great interest worldwide.
When negative becomes positive and compact
The triangularity describes the shape of the plasma. Most tokamaks operate with positive triangularity, meaning that the plasma shape looks like a D. When the D is mirrored (as shown in the figure on the right), the plasma has negative triangularity.
Negative triangularity plasma shapes feature enhanced performance as it suppresses instabilities that expel particles and energy from the plasma, preventing severe damage to the tokamak wall. Besides offering high fusion performance, negative triangularity also feature attractive power handling solutions, given that it covers a larger divertor area for distributing the heat exhaust. This also facilitates the engineering design for future compact fusion power plants.
Fusion2Grid aimed at developing the foundation for the most compact fusion power plant
SMART is the first step in the Fusion2Grid strategy led by the PSFT team and, in collaboration with the international fusion community, is aimed at the most compact and most efficient magnetically confined fusion power plant based on Negative Triangularity shaped Spherical Tokamaks.
SMART will be the first compact spherical tokamak operating at fusion temperatures with negative triangularity shaped plasmas.
The objective of SMART is to provide the physics and engineering basis for the most compact design of a fusion power plant based on high-field Spherical Tokamaks combined with Negative Triangularity. The solenoid-driven plasma represents a major achievement in the timeline of getting SMART online and advancing towards the most compact fusion device.
The Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab of the University of Seville hosts the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) and leads several worldwide efforts on energetic particles and plasma transport and stability towards the development of magnetically confined fusion energy.
Caption: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. Credit: Image by HFIPS ( Hefei Institutes of Physical Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
China has made a business announcement and there is no academic paper mentioned in their January 21, 2025 press release on EurekAlert (also available on phys.org as a January 21, 2025 news item), Note: A link has been removed,
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), commonly known as China’s “artificial sun,” has achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This accomplishment, reached on Monday, sets a new world record and marks a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.
The duration of 1,066 seconds is a critical advancement in fusion research. This milestone, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Scienece [sic] (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, far surpasses the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023.
The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occurr [sci] in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system.
Scientists worldwide have dedicated over 70 years to this ambitious goal. However, generating electricity from a nuclear fusion device involves overcoming key challenges, including reaching temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, maintaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring precise control of the fusion process.
“A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is essential for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants,” said SONG Yuntao, ASIPP director and also vice president of HFIPS. He said that the recent record is monumental, marking a critical step toward realizing a functional fusion reactor.
According to GONG Xianzu, head of the EAST Physics and Experimental Operations division, several systems of the EAST device have been upgraded since the last round of experiments. For example, the heating system, which previously operated at the equivalent power of nearly 70,000 household microwave ovens, has now doubled its power output while maintaining stability and continuity.
Since its inception in 2006, EAST has served as an open testing platform for both Chinese and international scientists to conduct fusion-related experiments and research.
China officially joined the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program in 2006 as its seventh member. Under the agreement, China is responsible for approximately 9 percent of the project’s construction and operation, with ASIPP serving as the primary institution for the Chinese mission.
ITER, currently under construction in southern France, is set to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor upon completion.
In recent years, EAST has consistently achieved groundbreaking advancements in high-confinement mode, a fundamental operational mode for experimental fusion reactors like ITER and the future China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). These accomplishments provide invaluable insights and references for the global development of fusion reactors.
“We hope to expand international collaboration via EAST and bring fusion energy into practical use for humanity,” said SONG.
In Hefei, Anhui Province, China, where EAST is loacated [sic], a new generation of experimental fusion research facilities is currently under construction. These facilities aim to further accelerate the development and application of fusion energy.
I always feel a little less confident about the information when there are mistakes. Three typos in the same press release? Maybe someone forgot to give it a final once over?
Successfully harnessing the power of fusion energy could lead to cleaner and safer energy for all – and contribute substantially to combatting [UK spelling] the climate crisis. Towards this goal, Type One Energy has published a comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis for a practical fusion pilot power plant.
This groundbreaking research is presented in a series of six peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), published by Cambridge University Press.
The articles serve as the foundation for the company’s first fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing with the Tennessee Valley Authority utility in the United States.
Alex Schekochihin, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Editor of the JPP, spoke with enthusiasm about this development:
“JPP is very proud to provide a platform for rigorous peer review and publication of the papers presenting the physics basis of the Infinity Two stellarator — an innovative and ground-breaking addition to the expanding family of proposed fusion power plant designs.
“Fusion science and technology are experiencing a period of very rapid development, driven by both public and private enthusiasm for fusion power. In this environment of creative and entrepreneurial ferment, it is crucial that new ideas and designs are both publicly shared and thoroughly scrutinised by the scientific community — Type One Energy and JPP are setting the gold standard for how this is done (as we did with Commonwealth Fusion Systems 5 years ago for their SPARC physics basis).”
The new physics design basis for the pilot power plant is a robust effort to consider realistically the complex relationship between challenging, competing requirements that all need to function together for fusion energy to be possible.
This new physics solution also builds on the operating characteristics of high-performing stellarator fusion technology – a stellarator being a machine that uses complex, helical magnetic fields to confine the plasma, thereby enabling scientists to control it and create suitable conditions for fusion. This technology is already being used with success on the world’s largest research stellarator, the Wendelstein 7-X, located in Germany, but the challenge embraced by Type One Energy’s new design is how to scale it up to a pilot plant.
Building the future of energy
Functional fusion technology could offer limitless clean energy. As global energy demands increase and energy security is front of mind, too, this new physics design basis comes at an excellent time.
Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy, is cognisant of the landmark nature of his company’s achievement and proud of its strong, real-world foundations.
“The physics basis for our new fusion power plant is grounded in Type One Energy’s expert knowledge about reliable, economic, electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organisation that understands this isn’t only about designing a science project.”
This research was developed collaboratively between Type One Energy and a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. Collaborating organisations included the US Department of Energy, for using their supercomputers, such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to perform its physics simulations.
While commercial fusion energy has yet to move from theory into practice, this new research marks an important and promising milestone. Clean and abundant energy may yet become reality.
This is not directly related to fusion energy, so, you might want to skip this section.
Caption: Type One Energy employees at the Bull Run [emphasis mine] Fossil Plant, soon to be home to the prototype Infinity One. Credit: Type One Energy
I wonder if anyone argued for a change of name given how charged the US history associated with ‘Bull Run’ is, from the the First Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
The First Battle of Bull Run, called the Battle of First Manassas[1] by Confederate forces, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of what is now the city of Manassas and about thirty miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union Army was slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops. The battle was a Confederate victory and was followed by a disorganized post-battle retreat of the Union forces.
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A Confederate victory the first time and the second time (Second Battle of Bull Run Wikipedia entry)? For anyone unfamiliar with the history, the US Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederate states had seceded from the union (US) and were fighting to retain their slavery-based economy and they lost the war.
Had anyone consulted me I would have advised changing the name from Bull Run to some thing less charged (pun noted) to host your prototype fusion energy pilot plant.
Back to the usual programme.
Type One Energy
Type One Energy issued a March 27, 2025 news release about the special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP), Note 1: Some of this redundant; Note 2: Links have been removed,
Type One Energy announced today publication of the world’s first comprehensive, self-consistent, and robust physics basis, with conservative design margins, for a practical fusion pilot power plant. This physics basis is presented in a series of seven peer-reviewed scientific papers in a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Plasma Physics (JPP). They serve as the foundation for the company’s first Infinity Two stellarator fusion power plant project, which Type One Energy is developing for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) utility in the U.S.
The Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant physics design basis realistically considers, for the first time, the complex relationship between competing requirements for plasma performance, power plant startup, construction logistics, reliability, and economics utilizing actual power plant operating experience. This Infinity Two baseline physics solution makes use of the inherently favorable operating characteristics of highly optimized stellarator fusion technology using modular superconducting magnets, as was so successfully proven on the W7-X science machine in Germany.
“Why are we the first private fusion company with an agreement to develop a potential fusion power plant project for an energy utility? Because we have a design anchored in reality,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of Type One Energy. “The physics basis for Infinity Two is grounded in the knowledge of what is required for application to, and performance in, the demanding environment of reliable electrical generation for the power grid. We have an organization that understands this isn’t about designing a science project.”
Led by Chris Hegna, widely recognized as a leading theorist in modern stellarators, Type One Energy performed high-fidelity computational plasma physics analyses to substantially reduce the risk of meeting Infinity Two power plant functional and performance requirements. This unique and transformational achievement is the result of a global development program led by the Type One Energy plasma physics and stellarator engineering organization, with significant contributions from a broad coalition of scientists from national laboratories and universities around the world. The company made use of a spectrum of high-performance computing facilities, including access to the highest-performance U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers such as the exascale Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to perform its stellarator physics simulations.
“We committed to this ambitious fusion commercialization milestone two years ago and today we delivered,” said John Canik, Chief Science and Engineering Officer for Type One Energy. “The team was able to efficiently develop deep plasma physics insights to inform the design of our Infinity Two stellarator, by taking advantage of our access to high performance computing resources. This enabled the Type One Energy team to demonstrate a realistic, integrated stellarator design that moves far beyond conventional thinking and concepts derived from more limited modeling capabilities.”
The consistent and robust physics solution for Infinity Two results in a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fueled, burning plasma stellarator with 800 MW of fusion power and delivers a nominal 350 MWe to the power grid. It is characterized by fusion plasma with resilient and stable behavior across a broad range of operating conditions, very low heat loss due to turbulent transport, as well as tolerable direct energy losses to the stellarator first wall. The Infinity Two stellarator has sufficient room for both adequately sized island divertors to exhaust helium ash and a blanket which provides appropriate shielding and tritium breeding. Type One Energy has high confidence that this essential physics solution provides a good baseline stellarator configuration for the Infinity Two fusion pilot power plant.
“The articles in this issue [of JPP] represent an important step towards a fusion reactor based on the stellarator concept. Thanks to decades of experiments and theoretical research, much of the latter published in JPP, it has become possible to lay out the physics basis for a stellarator power plant in considerable detail,” said Per Helander, head of Stellarator Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “JPP is very happy to publish this series of papers from Type One Energy, where this has been accomplished in a way that sets new standards for the fidelity and confidence level in this context.”
Important to successful fusion power plant commercialization, this stellarator configuration has enabled Type One Energy to architect a maintenance solution which supports good power plant Capacity Factors (CF) and associated Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). It also supports favorable regulatory requirements for component manufacturing and power plant construction methods essential to achieving a reasonable Over-Night Cost (ONC) for Infinity Two.
About Type One Energy
Type One Energy Group is mission-driven to provide sustainable, affordable fusion power to the world. Established in 2019 and venture-backed in 2023, the company is led by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists with a strong track record of building state-of-the-art stellarator fusion machines, together with veteran business leaders experienced in scaling companies and commercializing energy technologies. Type One Energy applies proven advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its optimized stellarator fusion energy system. Its FusionDirect development program pursues the lowest-risk, shortest-schedule path to a fusion power plant over the coming decade, using a partner-intensive and capital-efficient strategy. Type One Energy is committed to community engagement in the development and deployment of its clean energy technology. For more information, visit www.typeoneenergy.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
While the company is currently headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, it was originally a spinoff company from the University of Wisconsin-Madison according to a March 30, 2023 posting on the university’s College of Engineering website,
Type One Energy, a Middleton, Wisconsin-based fusion energy company with roots in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Engineering, recently announced its first round of seed funding, raising $29 million from investors. The company has also onboarded a new, highly experienced CEO [Christofer Mowry].
Type One, founded in 2019 by a team of globally recognized fusion scientists and business leaders, is hoping to commercialize stellarator technology over the next decade. Stellarators are a type of fusion reactor that uses powerful magnets to confine ultra-hot streams of plasma in order to create the conditions for fusion reactions. Energy from fusion promises to be clean, safe, renewable power. The company is using advanced manufacturing methods, modern computational physics and high-field superconducting magnets to develop its stellarator through an initiative called FusionDirect.
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According to the Type One Energy’s About page, there are four offices with the headquarters in Tennessee,
Madison 316 W Washington Ave. Suite 300 Madison, WI 53703
Boston 299 Washington St. Suites C & E Woburn, MA 01801
Vancouver 1140 West Pender St. Vancouver, BC V6E 4G1
The mention of an office in Vancouver, Canada piqued my curiosity but before getting to that, I’m going to include some informative excerpts about nuclear energy (both fission and fusion) from this August 31, 2023 article written by Tina Tosukhowong on behalf of TDK Ventures, which was posted on Medium,
Fusion power is the key to the energy transformation that humanity needs to drive decarbonization, clean, and baseload energy production that is inherently fail-safe, with no risk of long-lived radioactive waste, while also delivering on ever-growing energy-consumption demands at the global scale. Fusion is hard and requires exceptional conditions for sustained reaction (which is part of what makes it so safe), which has long served as a deterrent for technical maturation and industrial viability. …
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The current reality of our world is monumental fossil-fuel dependence. This, coupled with unprecedented levels of energy demand has resulted in the over 136,700 TWh (that’s 10¹²) of energy consumed via fossil fuels annually [1]. Chief repercussion among the many consequences of this dependence is the now very looming threat of climate catastrophe, which will soon be irreversible if global temperature rise is not abated and held to within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels. To do so, the nearly 40 gigatons of CO2 emissions generated each year must be steadily reduced and eventually mitigated entirely [2]. A fundamental shift in how power is generated globally is the only way forward. Humanity needs an energy transformation — the right energy transformation.
Alternative energy-generation techniques, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric approaches have all made excellent strides, and indeed in just the United States electricity generated by renewable methods doubled from 10 to 20% of total between 2010 and 2020 [3–4]. These numbers are incredibly encouraging and give significant credence in the journey to net-zero emission energy generation. However, while these standard renewable approaches should be championed, wind and solar are intermittent and require a large amount of land to deploy, while geothermal and hydroelectric are not available in every geography.
By far the most viable candidates for continuous clean energy generation to replace coal-fired power plants are nuclear-driven technologies, i.e. nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission has been a proven effective method ever since it was first demonstrated almost 80 years ago underneath the University of Chicago football Stadium by Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi [5]. Heavier atomic elements, in most cases Uranium-235, are exposed to and bombarded by neutrons. This causes the Uranium to split resulting in two slightly less-heavy elements (like Barium and Krypton). This in turn causes energy to be released and more neutrons to be ejected and bombard other nearby Uranium-235, at which point the process cascades into a chain reaction. The released energy (heat) is utilized in the same way coal is burned in a traditional power plant, being subsequently used to generate electricity usually via the creation of steam to drive a turbine [6]. While already having reached viable commercial maturity, fission carries inherent and nontrivial safety concerns. An unhampered chain reaction can quickly lead to meltdown with disastrous consequences, and, even when properly managed, the end reaction does generate radioactive waste whose half-life can last hundreds of thousands of years.
Figure 1. Breakdown of a nuclear fission reaction [6]. Incident neutron bombards a fissile heavy element, splitting it and release energy and more nuclei setting off a chain reaction.
Especially given modernization efforts and meteoric gains in safety (thanks to advents in material science like ceramic coatings), fission will continue to be a critical piece to better, greener energy transformation. However, in extending our vision to an even brighter future with no such concerns — carbon emissions or safety — nuclear fusion is humanity’s silver bullet. Instead of breaking down atoms leading to a chain reaction, fusion is the combining of atoms (usually isotopes of Hydrogen) into heavier elements which also results in energy release / heat generation [7]. Like fission, fusion can be designed to be a continuous energy source that can serve as a permanent backbone to the power grid. It is extremely energy dense, with 1 kg of fusion fuel producing the same amount of energy as 1,000,000 kg of coal, and it is inherently fail-safe with no long-term radioactive waste.
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As a concept, if fusion is a silver bullet to answer humanity’s energy transformation needs, then why haven’t we done so already? The appeal seems so obvious, what’s the hold up? Simply put, nuclear fusion is hard for the very same reason the process is inherently safe. Atoms in the process must have enough energy to overcome electrostatic repulsive forces between the two positive charges of their nuclei to fuse. The key figure of merit to evaluate fusion is the so-called “Lawson Triple Product.” Essentially, this means in order to generate energy by fusion more than the rate of energy oss to the environment, the nuclei must be very close together (as represented by n — the plasma density), kept at a high enough temperature (as represented by T — temperature), and for long enough time to sustain fusion (as represented by τ — the confinement time). The triple product required to achieve fusion “ignition” (the state where the rate of energy production is higher than the rate of loss) depends on the fuel type and occurs within a plasma state. A deuterium and tritium (D-T) system has the lowest Lawson Triple product requirement, where fusion can achieve a viable threshold for ignition when the density of the fuel atoms, n, multiplied by the fuel temperature, T, multiplied by the confinement time, τ, is greater than 5×10²¹ (nTτ > 5×10²¹ keV-s/m³) [8–9]. For context, the temperature alone in this scenario must be higher than 100-million degrees Celsius.
Figure 2. (Left) Conceptual illustration of a fusion reaction with Deuterium (²H) and Tritium (³H) forming an Alpha particle (⁴He) and free neutron along with energy released as heat (Right). To initiate fusion, repelling electrostatic charge must be overcome via conditions meeting the minimum Lawson Triple Product threshold
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Tosukhowong’s August 31, 2023 article provides a good overview keeping in mind that it is slanted to justify TDK’s investment in Type One Energy.
Why a Vancouver, Canada office?
As for Type One Energy’s Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) connection, I was reminded of General Fusion, a local fusion energy company while speculating about the connection. First speculative question: could Type One Energy’s presence in Canada allow it to access Canadian government funds for its research? Second speculative question: do they want to have access to people who might hesitate to move to the US or might want to move out of the US but would move to Canada?
The US is currently in an unstable state as suggested in this April 3, 2025 opinion piece by Les Leyne for vancouverisawsome.com
Les Leyne: Trump’s incoherence makes responding to tariff wall tricky
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details
B.C. officials were guarded Wednesday [April 2, 2025] about the impact on Canada of the tariff wall U.S. President Donald Trump erected around the U.S., but it appears it could have been worse.
Trump’s announcement was so incoherent that much of the rest of the world had to scramble to grasp even the basic details. So cabinet ministers begged for more time to check the impacts.
“It’s still very uncertain,” said Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, who chairs the “war room” committee responsible for countering tariff threats. “It’s hard to make sense from President Trump’s speech.” [emphasis mine]
Kahlon said the challenge is that tariff policies change hour by hour, “and anything can happen.”
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On April 2, 2025 US President Donald Trump announced tariffs (then paused some of the tariffs on April 9, 2025) and some of the targets seemed a bit odd, from an April 2, 2025 article by Alex Galbraith for salon.com, Note: Links have been removed,
“Trade war with penguins”: Trump places 10% tariff on uninhabited Antarctic islands
Planned tariffs shared by the White House included a 10% duty on imports from the barren Heard and McDonald Islands
For once in his life, Donald Trump underpromised and over-delivered.
The president announced a 10% duty on all imports on Wednesday [April 2, 2025], along with a raft of reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners. An extensive graphic released by the White House showed how far Trump was willing to take his tit-for-tat trade war, including a shocking levy of 10% on all imports from the Heard and McDonald Islands.
If you haven’t heard of this powerhouse of global trade and territory of Australia, you aren’t alone. Few have outside of Antarctic researchers and seals. These extremely remote islands about 1,000 miles north of Antarctica consist mostly of barren tundra. They’re also entirely uninhabited.
The news that we were starting a trade war with penguins spread quickly after Trump’s announcement. …
U.S. stock futures crumbled following the news of Trump’s widespread tariffs. Dow futures fell by nearly 1,000 points while NASDAQ and S&P futures fell by 3 to 4%. American companies’ stock values rapidly tumbled after the announcement, with large retail importers seeing significant losses. …
No word from the penguins about the ‘pause’. I’m assuming Donald Trump’s next book will be titled, “The art of negotiating trade deals with penguins.” Can’t wait to read it.
(Perhaps someone should tell him there are no penguins in the Arctic so he can’t bypass Canadians or Greenlanders to make a deal.)
Now for the local story.
General Fusion
There’ve been two recent developments at General Fusion. Most recently, an April 2, 2025 General Fusion news release announces a new hire, Note: Links have been removed,
Bob Smith is joining General Fusion as a strategic advisor. Smith brings more than 35 years of experience developing, scaling, and launching world-changing technologies, including spearheading new products and innovation in the aerospace industry at United Space Alliance, Sandia Labs, and Honeywell before serving as CEO of Blue Origin. He joins General Fusion as the company’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) fusion demonstration begins operations and progresses toward transformative technical milestones on the path to commercialization.
“I’ve been watching the fusion energy industry closely for my entire career. Fusion is the last energy source humanity will ever need, and I believe its impact as a zero-carbon energy source will transform the global energy supply at the time needed to fight the worst consequences of climate change,” said Smith. “I am thrilled to work with General Fusion. Their novel approach has inherent and distinctive benefits for the generation of commercially competitive fusion power. It’s exciting to join at a time when the team is about to demonstrate the fundamental physics behind their system and move to scaling up to a pilot plant.”
The LM26 program marks a significant step towards commercialization, as the company’s unique Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies—because it practically addresses barriers to fusion commercialization, such as neutron material degradation, sustainable fuel production, and efficient energy extraction. As a strategic advisor, Smith will leverage his experience advancing game-changing technologies to help guide General Fusion’s technology development and strategic growth.
“Bob’s insights and experience will be invaluable as we execute the LM26 program and look beyond it to propel our practical technology to powering the grid by the mid-2030s,” said Greg Twinney, CEO, General Fusion. “We are grateful for his commitment of his in-demand time and expertise to our mission and look forward to working together to make fusion power a reality!”
About Bob Smith:
Bob is an experienced business leader in the aerospace and defense industry with extensive technical and operational expertise across the sector. He worked at and managed federal labs, led developments at a large government contractor, grew businesses at a Fortune 100 multinational, and scaled up a launch and space systems startup. Bob also has extensive international experience and has worked with suppliers and OEMs in all the major aerospace regions, including establishing new sites and factories in Europe, India, China, and Puerto Rico.
Bob’s prior leadership roles include Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Origin, President of Mechanical Systems & Components at Honeywell Aerospace, Chief Technology Officer at Honeywell Aerospace, Chairman of NTESS (Sandia Labs), and Executive Director of Space Shuttle Upgrades at United Space Alliance.
Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M, a Master of Science degree in engineering/applied mathematics from Brown University, a doctorate from the University of Texas in aerospace engineering, and a business degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Bob is also a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and an Academician in the International Academy of Astronautics.
Quick Facts:
Fusion energy is the ultimate clean energy solution—it is the energy source that powers the sun and stars. Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei merge to form a heavier one, producing a massive amount of energy.
General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology is designed to scale for cost-efficient power plants. It uses mechanical compression to create fusion conditions in short pulses, eliminating the need for expensive lasers or superconducting magnets. An MTF power plant is designed to produce its own fuel and inherently includes a method to extract the energy and put it to work.
Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) is a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration. Launched, designed, and assembled in just 16 months, the machine is now forming magnetized plasmas regularly at 50 per cent commercial scale. It is advancing towards a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way: 10 million degrees Celsius (1 keV), 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), and scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson).
About General Fusion General Fusion is pursuing a fast and practical approach to commercial fusion energy and is headquartered in Richmond, Canada. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. Learn more at www.generalfusion.com.
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Bob Smith and Blue Origin: things did not go well
Sometimes you end up in a job and things do not work out well and that seems to have been the case at Blue Origin according to a September 25, 2023 article by Eric Berger for Ars Tecnica,
After six years of running Blue Origin, Bob Smith announced in a company-wide email on Monday that he will be “stepping aside” as chief executive of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos.
“It has been my privilege to be part of this great team, and I am confident that Blue Origin’s greatest achievements are still ahead of us,” Smith wrote in an email. “We’ve rapidly scaled this company from its prototyping and research roots to a large, prominent space business.”
Shortly after Smith’s email, a Blue Origin spokesperson said the company’s new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon’s vice president of devices and services last month.
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To put things politely, Smith has had a rocky tenure as Blue Origin’s chief executive. After being personally vetted and hired by Bezos, Smith took over from Rob Meyerson in 2017. The Honeywell engineer was given a mandate to transform Blue Origin into a large and profitable space business.
He did succeed in growing Blue Origin. The company had about 1,500 employees when Smith arrived, and the company now employs nearly 11,000 people. But he has been significantly late on a number of key programs, including the BE-4 rocket engine and the New Glenn rocket.
As a space reporter, I have spoken with dozens of current and former Blue Origin employees, and virtually none of them have had anything positive to say about Smith’s tenure as chief executive. I asked one current employee about the hiring of Limp on Monday afternoon, and their response was, “Anything is better than Bob.”
Although it is very far from an exact barometer, Smith has received consistently low ratings on Glassdoor for his performance as chief executive of Blue Origin. And two years ago, a group of current and former Blue Origin employees wrote a blistering letter about the company under Smith. “In our experience, Blue Origin’s culture sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs,” the essay authors wrote.
With any corporate culture, there will be growing pains, of course. But Smith brought a traditional aerospace mindset into a company that had hitherto been guided by a new space vision, leading to a high turnover rate. And Blue Origin remains significantly underwater, financially. It is likely that Bezos is still providing about $2 billion a year to support the company’s cash needs.
Crucially, as Blue Origin meandered under Smith’s tenure, SpaceX soared, launching hundreds of rockets and thousands of satellites. Smith, clearly, was not the leader Blue Origin needed to make the company more competitive with SpaceX in launch and other spaceflight activities. It became something of a parlor game in the space industry to guess when Bezos would finally get around to firing Smith.
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On the technical front, a March 27, 2025 General Fusion news release announces “Peer-reviewed publication confirms General Fusion achieved plasma energy confinement time required for its LM26 large-scale fusion machine,” Note: Links have been removed,
New results published in Nuclear Fusionconfirm General Fusion successfully created magnetized plasmas that achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds. The published energy confinement time results were achieved on General Fusion’s PI3 plasma injector — the world’s largest and most powerful plasma injector of its kind. Commissioned in 2017, PI3 formed approximately 20,000 plasmas in a machine of 50 per cent commercial scale. The plasma injector is now integrated into General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) — a world-first Magnetized Target Fusion demonstration tracking toward game-changing technical milestones that will advance the company’s ultimate mission: generating zero-carbon fusion energy for the grid in the next decade.
The 10-millisecond energy confinement time is the duration required to compress plasmas in LM26 to achieve key temperature thresholds of 1 keV, 10 keV, and, ultimately, scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson). These results were imperative to de-risking LM26. The demonstration machine is now forming plasmas regularly, and the company is optimizing its plasma performance in preparation for compressing plasmas to create fusion and heating from compression.
Key Findings:
The plasma injector now integrated into General Fusion’s LM26 achieved energy confinement times exceeding 10 milliseconds, the pre-compression confinement time required for LM26’s targeted technical milestones. These results were achieved without requiring active magnetic stabilization or auxiliary heating. This means the results were achieved without superconducting magnets, demonstrating the company’s cost-effective approach.
The plasma’s energy confinement time improved when the plasma injector vessel was coated with natural lithium. A key differentiator in General Fusion’s commercial approach is its use of a liquid lithium wall to compress plasmas during compression. In addition to the confinement time advantages shown in this paper, the liquid lithium wall will also protect a commercial MTF machine from neutron damage, enable the machine to breed its own fuel, and provide an efficient method for extracting energy from the machine.
The maximum energy confinement time achieved by PI3 was approximately 12 milliseconds. The machine’s maximum plasma density was approximately 6×1019 m-3, and maximum plasma temperatures exceeded 400 eV. These strong pre-compression results support LM26’s transformative targets.
Quotes:
“LM26 is designed to achieve a series of results that will demonstrate MTF in a commercially relevant way. Following LM26’s results, our unique approach makes the path to powering the grid with fusion energy more straightforward than other technologies because we have front-loaded the work to address the barriers to commercialization.”
Dr. Michel Laberge Founder and Chief Science Officer
“For over 16 years, I have worked hand in hand with Michel to advance General Fusion’s practical technology. This company is entrepreneurial at its core. We pride ourselves on building real machines that get results that matter, and I’m thrilled to have the achievements recognized in Nuclear Fusion.”
Mike Donaldson Senior Vice President, Technology Development
For anyone curious about General Fusion, I have a brief overview and history of the company and their particular approach to fusion energy in my February 6, 2024 posting (scroll down to ‘The Canadians’).
It’s funny how you think you know something and then realize you don’t. I’ve been hearing about cold fusion/fusion energy for years but never really understood what the term meant. So, this post includes an explanation, as well as, an overview, and a Cold Fusion Rap to ‘wrap’ it all up. (Sometimes I cannot resist a pun.)
Fusion energy explanation (1)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a Climate Portal where fusion energy is explained,
Fusion energy is the source of energy at the center of stars, including our own sun. Stars, like most of the universe, are made up of hydrogen, the simplest and most abundant element in the universe, created during the big bang. The center of a star is so hot and so dense that the immense pressure forces hydrogen atoms together. These atoms are forced together so strongly that they create new atoms entirely—helium atoms—and release a staggering amount of energy in the process. This energy is called fusion energy.
More energy than chemical energy
Fusion energy, like fossil fuels, is a form of stored energy. But fusion can create 20 to 100 million times more energy than the chemical reaction of a fossil fuel. Most of the mass of an atom, 99.9 percent, is contained at an atom’s center—inside of its nucleus. The ratio of this matter to the empty space in an atom is almost exactly the same ratio of how much energy you release when you manipulate the nucleus. In contrast, a chemical reaction, such as burning coal, rearranges the atoms through heat, but doesn’t alter the atoms themselves, so we don’t get as much energy.
Making fusion energy
For scientists, making fusion energy means recreating the conditions of stars, starting with plasma. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. Ice is an example of a solid. When heated up, it becomes a liquid. Place that liquid in a pot on the stove, and it becomes a gas (steam). If you take that gas and continue to make it hotter, at around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (~6,000 Kelvin), it will change from a gas to the next phase of matter: plasma. Ninety-nine percent of the mass in the universe is in the plasma state, since almost the entire mass of the universe is in super hot stars that exist as plasma.
To make fusion energy, scientists must first build a steel chamber and create a vacuum, like in outer space. The next step is to add hydrogen gas. The gas particles are charged to produce an electric current and then surrounded and contained with an electromagnetic force; the hydrogen is now a plasma. This plasma is then heated to about 100 million degrees and fusion energy is released.
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Fusion energy explanation (2)
A Vancouver-based company, General Fusion, offers an explanation of how they have approached making fusion energy a reality,
Today [October 17, 2022], General Fusion and the UKAEA kick off projects to advance the commercialization of magnetized target fusion energy as part of an important collaborative agreement. With these unique projects, General Fusion will benefit from the vast experience of the UKAEA’s team. The results will hone the design of General Fusion’s demonstration machine being built at the Culham Campus, part of the thriving UK fusion cluster. Ultimately, the company expects the projects will support its efforts to provide low-cost and low-carbon energy to the electricity grid.
General Fusion’s approach to fusion maximizes the reapplication of existing industrialized technologies, bypassing the need for expensive superconducting magnets, significant new materials, or high-power lasers. The demonstration machine will create fusion conditions in a power-plant-relevant environment, confirming the performance and economics of the company’s technology.
“The leading-edge fusion researchers at UKAEA have proven experience building, commissioning, and successfully operating large fusion machines,” said Greg Twinney, Chief Executive Officer, General Fusion. “Partnering with UKAEA’s incredible team will fast-track work to advance our technology and achieve our mission of delivering affordable commercial fusion power to the world.”
“Fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific and engineering quests of our time,” said Ian Chapman, UKAEA CEO. “This collaboration will enable General Fusion to benefit from the ground-breaking research being done in the UK and supports our shared aims of making fusion part of the world’s future energy mix for generations to come.”
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I last wrote about General Fusion in a November 3, 2021 posting about the company’s move (?) to Sea Island, Richmond,
I first wrote about General Fusion in a December 2, 2011 posting titled: Burnaby-based company (Canada) challenges fossil fuel consumption with nuclear fusion. (For those unfamiliar with the Vancouver area, there’s the city of Vancouver and there’s Vancouver Metro, which includes the city of Vancouver and others in the region. Burnaby is part of Metro Vancouver; General Fusion is moving to Sea Island (near Vancouver Airport), in Richmond, which is also in Metro Vancouver.) Kenneth Chan’s October 20, 2021 article for the Daily Hive gives more detail about General Fusion’s new facilities (Note: A link has been removed),
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The new facility will span two buildings at 6020 and 6082 Russ Baker Way, near YVR’s [Vancouver Airport] South Terminal. This includes a larger building previously used for aircraft engine maintenance and repair.
The relocation process could start before the end of 2021, allowing the company to more than quadruple its workforce over the coming years. Currently, it employs about 140 people.
The Sea Island [in Richmond] facility will house its corporate offices, primary fusion technology development division, and many of its engineering laboratories. This new facility provides General Fusion with the ability to build a new demonstration prototype to support the commercialization of its magnetized target fusion technology.
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As of the date of this posting, I have not been able to confirm the move. The company’s Contact webpage lists an address in Burnaby, BC for its headquarters.
With energy prices on the rise, along with demands for energy independence and an urgent need for carbon-free power, plans to walk away from nuclear energy are now being revised in Japan, South Korea, and even Germany. Last month, Europe announced green bonds for nuclear, and the U.S., thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, will soon devote millions to new nuclear designs, incentives for nuclear production and domestic uranium mining, and, after years of paucity in funding, cash for fusion.
The new investment comes as fusion—long considered a pipe dream—has attracted real money from big venture capital and big companies, who are increasingly betting that abundant, cheap, clean nuclear will be a multi-trillion dollar industry. Last year, investors like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos injected a record $3.4 billion into firms working on the technology, according to Pitchbook. One fusion firm, Seattle-based Helion, raised a record $500 million from Sam Altman and Peter Thiel. That money has certainly supercharged the nuclear sector: The Fusion Industry Association says that at least 33 different companies were now pursuing nuclear fusion, and predicted that fusion would be connected to the energy grid sometime in the 2030s.
… What’s not a joke is that we have about zero years to stop powering our civilization with earth-warming energy. The challenge with fusion is to achieve net energy gain, where the energy produced by a fusion reaction exceeds the energy used to make it. One milestone came quietly this month, when a team of researchers at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California announced that an experiment last year had yielded over 1.3 megajoules (MJ) of energy, setting a new world record for energy yield for a nuclear fusion experiment. The experiment also achieved scientific ignition for the first time in history: after applying enough heat using an arsenal of lasers, the plasma became self-heating. (Researchers have since been trying to replicate the result, so far without success.)
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On a growing campus an hour outside of Boston, the MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building their first machine, SPARC, with a goal of producing power by 2025. “You’ll push a button,” CEO and cofounder Bob Mumgaard told the Khosla Ventures CEO Summit this summer, “and for the first time on earth you will make more power out than in from a fusion plasma. That’s about 200 million degrees—you know, cooling towers will have a bunch of steam go out of them—and you let your finger off the button and it will stop, and you push the button again and it will go.” With an explosion in funding from investors including Khosla, Bill Gates, George Soros, Emerson Collective and Google to name a few—they raised $1.8 billion last year alone—CFS hopes to start operating a prototype in 2025.
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Like the three-decade-old ITER project in France, set for operation in 2025, Commonwealth and many other companies will try to reach net energy gain using a machine called a tokamak, a bagel-shaped device filled with super-hot plasma, heated to about 150 million degrees, within which hydrogen atoms can fuse and release energy. To control that hot plasma, you need to build a very powerful magnetic field. Commonwealth’s breakthrough was tape—specifically, a high-temperature-superconducting steel tape coated with a compound called yttrium-barium-copper oxide. When a prototype was first made commercially available in 2009, Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, ordered as much as he could. With Mumgaard and a team of students, his lab used coils of the stuff to build a new kind of superconducting magnet, and a prototype reactor named ARC, after Tony Stark’s energy source. Commonwealth was born in 2015.
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Southern California-based TAE Technologies has raised a whopping $1.2 billion since it was founded in 1998, and $250 million in its latest round. The round, announced in July, was led by Chevron’s venture arm, Google, and Sumitomo, a Tokyo-based holding company that aims to deploy fusion power in the Asia-Pacific market. TAE’s approach, which involves creating a fusion reaction at incredibly high heat, has a key advantage. Whereas ITER uses the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, an extremely rare element that must be specially created from lithium—and that produces as a byproduct radioactive-free neutrons—TAE’s linear reactor is completely non-radioactive, because it relies on hydrogen and boron, two abundant, naturally-occurring elements that react to produce only helium.
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General Atomics, of San Diego, California, has the largest tokamak in the U.S. Its powerful magnetic chamber, called the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, or just “D-three-D,” now features a Toroidal Field Reversing Switch, which allows for the redirection of 120,000 amps of the current that power the primary magnetic field. It’s the only tokamak in the world that allows researchers to switch directions of the magnetic fields in minutes rather than hours. Another new upgrade, a traveling-wave antenna, allows physicists to inject high-powered “helicon” radio waves into DIII-D plasmas so fusion reactions occur much more powerfully and efficiently.
“We’ve got new tools for flexibility and new tools to help us figure out how to make that fusion plasma just keep going,” Richard Buttery, director of the project, told the San Diego Union-Tribune in January. The company is also behind eight of the magnet modules at the heart of the ITER facility, including its wild Central Solenoid — the world’s most powerful magnet — in a kind of scaled up version of the California machine.
But like an awful lot in fusion, ITER has been hampered by cost overruns and delays, with “first plasma” not expected to occur in 2025 as previously expected due to global pandemic-related disruptions. Some have complained that the money going to ITER has distracted from other more practical energy projects—the latest price tag is $22 billion—and others doubt if the project can ever produce net energy gain.
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Based in Canada, General Fusion is backed by Jeff Bezos and building on technology originally developed by the U.S. Navy and explored by Russian scientists for potential use in weapons. Inside the machine, molten metal is spun to create a cavity, and pumped with pistons that push the metal inward to form a sphere. Hydrogen, heated to super-hot temperatures and held in place by a magnetic field, fills the sphere to create the reaction. Heat transferred to the metal can be turned into steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity. As former CEO Christofer Mowry told Fast Company last year, “to re-create a piece of the sun on Earth, as you can imagine, is very, very challenging.” Like many fusion companies, GF depends on modern supercomputers and advanced modeling and computational techniques to understand the science of plasma physics, as well as modern manufacturing technologies and materials.
“That’s really opened the door not just to being able to make fusion work but to make it work in a practical way,” Mowry said. This has been difficult to make work, but with a demonstration center it announced last year in Culham, England, GF isn’t aiming to generate electricity but to gather the data needed to later build a commercial pilot plant that could—and to generate more interest in fusion.
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Magneto-Intertial Fusion Technologies, or MIFTI, of Tustin, Calif., founded by researchers from the University of California, Irvine, is developing a reactor that uses what’s known as a Staged Z-Pinch approach. A Z-Pinch design heats, confines, and compresses plasma using an intense, pulsed electrical current to generate a magnetic field that could reduce instabilities in the plasma, allowing fusion to persist for longer periods of time. But only recently have MIFTI’s scientists been able to overcome the instability problems, the company says, thanks to software made available to them at UC-Irvine by the U.S. Air Force. …
Princeton Fusion Systems of Plainsboro, New Jersey, is a small business focused on developing small, clean fusion reactors for both terrestrial and space applications. A spinoff of Princeton Satellite Systems, which specializes in spacecraft control, the company’s Princeton FRC reactor is built upon 15 years of research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, funded primarily by the U.S. DOE and NASA, and is designed to eventually provide between 1 and 10 megawatts of power in off-grid locations and in modular power plants, “from remote industrial applications to emergency power after natural disasters to off-world bases on the moon or Mars.” The concept uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to generates and sustain a plasma formation called a Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) inside a strong magnetic bottle. …
Tokamak Energy, a U.K.-based company named after the popular fusion device, announced in July that its ST-40 tokamak reactor had reached the 100 million Celsius threshold for commercially viable nuclear fusion. The achievement was made possible by a proprietary design built on a spherical, rather than donut, shape. This means that the magnets are closer to the plasma stream, allowing for smaller and cheaper magnets to create even stronger magnetic fields. …
Based in Pasadena, California, Helicity Space is developing a propulsion and power technology based on a specialized magneto inertial fusion concept. The system, a spin on what fellow fusion engineer, Seattle-based Helion is doing, appears to use twisted compression coils, like a braided rope, to achieve a known phenomenon called the Magnetic Helicity. … According to ZoomInfo and Linkedin, Helicity has over $4 million in funding and up to 10 employees, all aimed, the company says, at “enabling humanity’s access to the solar system, with a Helicity Drive-powered flight to Mars expected to take two months, without planetary alignment.”
ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin and mentioned in Pasternak’s article, dates its history with *fusion back to about 1978 when cold fusion was the ‘hot’ topic*. (You can read more here in the ITER Wikipedia entry.)
For more about the various approaches to fusion energy, read Pasternack’s August 17, 2022 article (The frontrunners in the trillion-dollar race for limitless fusion power) provides details. I wish there had been a little more about efforts in Japan and South Korea and other parts of the world. Pasternak’s singular focus on the US with a little of Canada and the UK seemingly thrown into the mix to provide an international flavour seems a little myopic.
Fusion rap
In an August 30, 2022 Baba Brinkman announcement (received via email) which gave an extensive update of Brinkman’s activities, there was this,
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And the other new topic, which was surprisingly fun to explore, is cold fusion also known as “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” which you may or may not have a strong opinion about, but if you do I imagine you probably think the technology is either bunk or destined to save the world.
That makes for an interesting topic to explore in rap songs! And fortunately last month I had the pleasure of performing for the cream of the LENR crop at the 24th International Conference on Cold Fusion, including rap ups and two new songs about the field, one very celebratory (for the insiders), and one cautiously optimistic (as an outreach tool).
You can watch “Cold Fusion Renaissance” and “You Must LENR” [L ow E nergy N uclear R eactions or sometimes L attice E nabled N anoscale R eactions or Cold Fusion or CANR (C hemically A ssisted N uclear R eactions)] for yourself to determine which video is which, and also enjoy this article in Infinite Energy Magazine which chronicles my whole cold fusion rap saga.
Here’s one of the rap videos mentioned in Brinkman’s email,
Enjoy!
*December 13, 2022: Sentence changed from “ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin and mentioned in Pasternak’s article, dates its history with fusion back to about 1978 when cold fusion was the ‘hot’ topic.” to “ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), meaning “the way” or “the path” in Latin and mentioned in Pasternak’s article, dates its history with fusion back to about 1978 when cold fusion was the ‘hot’ topic.”
** ‘Pasternak’ corrected to ‘Pasternack” and ‘in Fast Company’ added on December 29, 2022
Nuclear energy is not usually of much interest to me but there is a Canadian company doing some interesting work in that area. So, before getting to the news about the company’s move, here’s a general description of fusion energy and how General Fusion (the company) is approaching the clean energy problem, from a June 18, 2021 posting by Bob McDonald on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Quirks and Quarks blog (Note: Links have been removed),
Vancouver-based fusion energy company General Fusion has entered an agreement with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to build a nuclear fusion demonstration plant to be operational in 2025. It will take a unique approach to generating clean energy.
There is an industry joke that fusion energy has been 20 years away for 50 years. The quest to produce clean energy by duplicating the processes happening at the centre of the sun has been a difficult and expensive challenge.
It has yet to be accomplished on anything like a commercial scale. That is partly because on Earth the fusion process involves handling materials at extreme pressures and temperatures many times hotter than the surface of the sun.
The nuclear technology that has provided electricity for decades around the world relies on fission, which splits heavy atoms such as uranium into lighter elements, releasing energy. However, this produces hazardous and durable radioactive waste that must be stored, and more catastrophically has led to major accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Fusion is the opposite of fission. Lighter elements such as hydrogen are heated and compressed to fuse into heavier ones. This releases energy, but with a much smaller legacy of radioactive waste, and no risk of meltdown.
The world’s largest fusion reactor experiment, ITER (Latin for “the way”) [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] is currently under construction in southern France. It’s a massive international collaboration developing on fusion technology that’s been been explored since it was invented in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It involves a doughnut-shaped metallic chamber called a tokamak that is surrounded by incredibly powerful superconducting magnets.
An electrically charged gas, or plasma, will be injected into the chamber where the magnets hold it, compressed and suspended, so it does not touch the walls and burn through them. The plasma will be heated to the unbelievable temperature of 150 million C, when fusion begins to take place.
And therein lies the problem. So far, experimental fusion reactors have required more energy to heat the plasma to start the fusion reaction than can be harvested from the reaction itself. Size is part of the problem. Demonstration reactors are small and meant to test equipment and materials, not produce power. ITER is supposed to be large enough to produce 10 times as much power as is required to heat up its plasma.
And that’s the holy grail of fusion: to produce enough power that the nuclear fusion reaction can become self-sustaining.
General Fusion takes a completely different approach by using mechanical pressure to contain and heat the plasma, rather than gigantic electromagnets. A series of powerful pistons surround a container of liquid metal with the hydrogen plasma in the centre. The pistons mechanically squeeze the liquid on all sides at once, heating the fuel by compression the way fuel in a diesel engine is compressed and heated in a cylinder until it ignites.
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Exciting, eh? If you have time, you may want to read McDonald’s June 18, 2021 posting for a few more details about General Fusion’s technology and for some embedded images.
At one point I was under the impression that General Fusion was involved with ITER but that seems to have been a misunderstanding on my part.
I first wrote about General Fusion in a December 2, 2011 posting titled: Burnaby-based company (Canada) challenges fossil fuel consumption with nuclear fusion. (For those unfamiliar with the Vancouver area, there’s the city of Vancouver and there’s Vancouver Metro, which includes the city of Vancouver and others in the region. Burnaby is part of Metro Vancouver; General Fusion is moving to Sea Island (near Vancouver Airport), in Richmond, which is also in Metro Vancouver.) Kenneth Chan’s October 20, 2021 article for the Daily Hive gives more detail about General Fusion’s new facilities (Note: A link has been removed),
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The new facility will span two buildings at 6020 and 6082 Russ Baker Way, near YVR’s [Vancouver Airport] South Terminal. This includes a larger building previously used for aircraft engine maintenance and repair.
The relocation process could start before the end of 2021, allowing the company to more than quadruple its workforce over the coming years. Currently, it employs about 140 people.
The Sea Island [in Richmond] facility will house its corporate offices, primary fusion technology development division, and many of its engineering laboratories. This new facility provides General Fusion with the ability to build a new demonstration prototype to support the commercialization of its magnetized target fusion technology.
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The company’s research and development into practical fusion technology as a zero-carbon power solution to address the world’s growing energy needs, while fighting climate change, is supported by the federal governments of Canada, US, and UK.
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General Fusion is backed by dozens of large global private investors, including Bezos Expeditions, which is the personal investment entity for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. It has raised a total of about USD$200 million in financing to date.
“British Columbia is at the centre of a thriving, world-class technology innovation ecosystem, just the right place for us to continue investing in our growing workforce and the future of our company,” said Christofer Mowry, CEO of General Fusion, in a statement.
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Earlier this year, YVR also indicated it is considering allowing commercial and industrial developments on several hundred acres of under-utilized parcels of land next to the north and south runways, for uses that complement airport activities. This would also provide the airport with a new source of revenue, after major financial losses from the years-long impact of COVID-19.
