A nuclear fusion start-up backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos will build its first pilot power plant outside London, potentially accelerating a new way of generating clean energy.
Canada's General Fusion is one of about two dozen start-ups trying to harness the power that makes stars shine. Rather than splitting atoms as in traditional fission reactors, fusion plants seek to bind them together at temperatures 10 times hotter than the sun. Doing so releases huge quantities of carbon-free energy with no atomic waste.
National laboratories have been trying to build economically sustainable fusion machines for more than a half century, but private investors have only recently joined the pursuit as urgency builds to find new sources of power to slow global warming.
"There are a lot of people preparing to take shots on goal right now," said General Fusion CEO Chris Mowry. "We have the first best but there are lots of others lining up."
Globally, more than $1.5bn (R21.3bn) has poured into private fusion start-ups. And public funding from 35 countries has gone towards the $22bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) being built in southern France. The project was supposed to begin testing in four years, though that date is in doubt after pandemic lockdowns snarled supply chains.
General Fusion's announcement follows a call in April by the US National Academies of Science for the country to accelerate plans to build a pilot fusion reactor capable of generating electricity as soon as 2035.
In November last year, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered $17bn in support for green industries including nuclear power. His government wants an operating fusion plant based on the ITER design by 2040.
Mowry said the UK's support for the General Fusion pilot plant was "very meaningful", but didn't elaborate on the amount involved. General Fusion, which raised $100m in its last round of fundraising, is again preparing to tap investors to help finance the project. "At some point we're going to go public," Mowry said.
Construction is expected to begin next year on the company's $400m facility near the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire. "There's a great talent pool there that knows how to operate and maintain large fusion machines," said Mowry.
Culham, home to the Joint European Torus (JET), has become one of the world's most important fusion science hubs. But much of the work on that project, which has endured over four decades, will wind down once ITER begins testing as funding is redirected towards the newer project.
Both JET and ITER are derived from designs first tested in the Soviet Union. Lasers and powerful electromagnets are arrayed around a supercooled, doughnut-shaped container to hold in place superheated plasma that is used to fuse the atoms.
General Fusion's machine takes a radically different approach. Its magnetised-target fusion reactor compresses a hydrogen target surrounded by a swirling wall of molten metal. About 500 synchronised pistons that encompass a cylinder fire at a rate of six to 60 shots per minute. Heat from the plasma is transferred to the metal, where it can be channelled to turbines that produce power.
Unlike the massive future fusion reactors envisioned by ITER that can generate more than 1,000MW of electricity each, General Fusion's machines will produce just 115MW of power - not enough energy to light up a large city but more than enough to stabilise grids filled with intermittent solar and wind power.
Scientists acknowledge that private investors are helping to balance pure research against commercial opportunity.
"It is time to dispel the ideal that fusion is an academic endeavor in pursuit of an energy unicorn," said International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi. "We can see this is around the corner. We are approaching this moment fast."
Bloomberg
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