Nuclear Fusion News & Discussions

[weatheriscool]

World’s First Fully High Temperature Superconducting Tokamak is China’s HH70
July 1, 2024 by Brian Wang

China has created the HH70 device, the world’s first fully high-temperature superconducting tokamak device, named HH70, in its eastern Municipality of Shanghai.
By 2027, Energy Singularity aims to build a next-generation tokamak, a steady-state, high-magnetic-field, high-temperature superconducting model. This project will lay the groundwork for commercially viable fusion energy acquisition, with an ultimate goal of a demonstration power plant by 2030.

The world’s first fully high-temperature superconducting Tokamak device, developed and constructed by Energy Singularity, known as “HH70,” has successfully achieved first plasma. HH70 has conducted discharge experiments based on two types of pre-ionization methods: localized helical magnetic flux injection (electron gun) and ion cyclotron heating (ICRF), and has successfully obtained the first plasma.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/07/w ... -hh70.html

[weatheriscool]

Another Ten Year Delay for ITER Fusion
July 3, 2024 by Brian Wang

The ITER (International Tokomak) fusion reactor currently being built in France will not achieve first operation until 2034 – almost a decade later than previously planned and some 50 years after the project was first conceived in 1985. The decision by ITER management to take another 10 years constructing the machine means that the first experiments using burning fusion fuel – a mixture of deuterium and tritium (D–T) – will now have to wait until 2039.

The goal is to generate about 500 MW of fusion power over 400 seconds using a plasma heating of 50 MW, a power gain of 10. The reactor would also test a “steady state” operation under a power gain of five.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/07/a ... usion.html

[firestar464]

^^^TIMELINE UPDATE

[Vakanai]

Getting closer to an actual, factual "20 years away" compared to the perpetual "20 years away" but still too far off for us to bank on in the here and now and near term. We have to focus on renewables to get us away from devastating fossil fuels, because as amazing as fusion energy will be I just can't see it happening quickly enough effectively enough for the dire urgency were in with climate change.

[firestar464]

Yeah even ASI would come first

[weatheriscool]

Fusion energy companies unite to accelerate commercial power
By David Szondy
July 08, 2024
https://newatlas.com/energy/iter-privat ... aboration/

A recent ITER workshop bringing together almost 50 CEOs and senior scientists from private fusion startups suggests that combining the technologies from magnetic and laser fusion experiments could accelerate the development of practical fusion power.

Though the field of fusion energy research is dominated by a few major efforts, there are today about 50 privately funded fusion startups in 12 countries that have garnered over US$5.6 billion in investments. Most of them claim that they will be able to achieve commercial fusion power by 2030.

Given the track record of fusion over the past 75 years, that must be taken with a grain of salt. Even the international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject ITER recently suffered a four-year timetable setback when the delivery of a 6,000-tonne magnet and other components was delayed.

[weatheriscool]

One step closer to using nuclear fusion as a new source of carbon free energy....

For the first time, a fusion device at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has generated plasma, inching one step closer toward using nuclear fusion as a a new source of carbon-free energy.
The university’s physicists and engineers have been building and testing the device at a lab in Stoughton for the last four years, which is referred to as the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror or WHAM. The magnetic mirror device became operational on July 15.
Researchers worldwide have been working for decades to harness energy from nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and the stars. That reaction relies on heated plasma, which is a gas of hot ions and free-moving electrons. Cary Forest, a UW-Madison physics professor, said generating plasma is an exciting step.

https://www.wpr.org/news/uw-madison-one ... n-research

[weatheriscool]

In a fusion device plasma, a steep ion temperature gradient slows the growth of magnetic islands
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-fusion-de ... p-ion.html
by US Department of Energy

Future fusion power plants will require good plasma confinement to sustain reactions and generate energy. One way to contain plasma for fusion reactions is to use a tokamak, a device that applies magnetic fields to "bottle" plasma. However, magnetic islands, a type of instability in the plasma, can destroy the confining magnetic field if they grow large enough.

Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have found that contrary to the flattened electron temperature profile, the ion temperature profile exhibited a steep change across islands. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Magnetic islands are instabilities in plasma that can grow until they result in a loss of confinement, and this sudden release of energy can damage the inner wall of a tokamak. The electron temperature profile is known to flatten within islands, with this change supporting island growth, but ion temperature has never been measured in an island.

[weatheriscool]

Startup Fuse Progresses to Terawatt Z-Pinch Fusion
October 21, 2024 by Brian Wang

Nuclear fusion startup, Fuse, is trying to make a mass production version nuclear fusion system based upon the Sandia Z Machine. This is magnetized target fusion using Marx generators. They leverage the Z pinch for their pulsed power approach.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/10/s ... usion.html

[weatheriscool]

7 Petawatt Laser for Fusion Energy in Colorado in 2026
October 21, 2024 by Brian Wang

Construction activity will start this month on a 7 Petwatt laser research facility located on Colorado State University’s Foothills Campus. It shluld be operational mid-2026. CSU, DOE Fusion Energy Sciences program and a strategic $150 million public-private partnership with industry leader Marvel Fusion that launched in 2023. 

The ATLAS Facility will be a unique cluster of high-intensity, high-repetition rate lasers that can be configured to fire simultaneously at a single fusion target. That burst will deliver nearly 7 petawatts of power – over 5,000 times the electrical generation capacity of the U.S. – into a focal spot roughly the width of a human hair for approximately 100 quadrillionths of a second. The trio of ultra high-power lasers can also be used independently and in other combinations to study questions beyond fusion energy, including key topics in fundamental research.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/10/7 ... -2026.html

[weatheriscool]

Spinning fusion fuel for efficiency and Burn Tritium Ten Times More Efficiently
November 20, 2024 by Brian Wang

Aligning the quantum property known as spin for fusion fuels could make it easier to generate electricity economically.


A different mix of fuels with enhanced properties could overcome some of the major barriers to making fusion a more practical energy source.

The proposed approach would still use deuterium and tritium, which are generally accepted as the most promising pair of fuels for fusion energy production. However, the quantum properties of the fuel would be adjusted for peak efficiency using an existing process known as spin polarization. In addition to spin polarizing half the fuels, the percentage of deuterium would be increased from the usual amount of roughly 60% or more.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/11/s ... ently.html

[caltrek]

“Fusion is Not a Typical Bet”: Interview with Silicon Valley Investor Mark Coopersmith
November 12, 2024

Introduction:

(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) Every time someone turns around, there seems to be another startup in Silicon Valley that claims to be on the verge of a so-called “breakthrough” in fusion—with massive amounts of private funding to go along with it. (To be fair, the East Coast has its share of such startups, such as the Boston area’s “Commonwealth Fusion Systems,” which reports raising $1.8 billion in funding to commercialize fusion energy.) Is there substance to an April 23 article in MIT’s Technology Review[1] that said that “record-setting magnets built by the Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems meet the requirements for an economical, compact power plant?”

It’s unclear how much substance there is to these claims of great advances in privately funded efforts at fusion. To make sense of just why there is seemingly so much interest in and money flowing toward private efforts at fusion—at the same time that many physicists and engineers who work in the field seem only guardedly optimistic at best about these multibillion-dollar efforts—I interviewed California-based venture capitalist (and UC-Berkeley professor) Mark Coopersmith via MS Teams.

For the interview: https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-1 ... -heading

1. See April 23, 2024 MIT Technology Review article “MIT’s superconducting magnets are ready for fusion.” https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/0 ... or-fusion/

From that interview:

Drollette: Having said that, the same physicists and engineers say they’re cautiously upbeat that fusion could eventually find its place—maybe by 2050 or 2080, or even the year 2100. Meanwhile, non-physicists and non-engineers seem much more upbeat about fusion’s prospects. There was a survey in [the peer-reviewed scientific journal] Nature[2]which found that 65 percent of companies predicted a fusion plant would be delivering electricity by the year 2035—or just over a decade from now, instead of 76 years.

2.See July 8, 2024 Nature article “ITER delay: What it means for nuclear fusion.” The subheading says “The world’s biggest fusion-energy experiment is likely to be beaten to its goals by other projects—but the massive reactor still has value, say scientists.” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586 ... 0he%20said

[weatheriscool]

Fusion Start-Up Plans to Build Its First Power Plant in Virginia

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an M.I.T. spinoff, aims to generate carbon-free electricity in an industrial park near Richmond in the early 2030s.


A mock-up of a section of the reactor that Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building in Devens, Mass.Simon Simard for The New York Times

By Raymond Zhong
Dec. 17, 2024
Updated 3:13 p.m. ET

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Tuesday that it planned to build its first fusion power plant in Virginia, with the aim of generating zero-emissions electricity there in the early 2030s.

The proposed facility is among the first to be announced that would harness nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, to produce power commercially, a long-elusive goal that scientists have pursued for the better part of a century.

In theory, a fusion reactor could generate abundant electricity without releasing planet-warming carbon dioxide, and with no risk of large-scale nuclear accidents. But moving the concept out of the lab and onto the power grid has proved immensely difficult.

Commonwealth is the best funded of a crop of start-ups that are hoping to realize fusion’s potential soon. The company is first building a pilot machine in Massachusetts, one it says will demonstrate the feasibility of its technology in 2027.

{snip}

Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/clim ... plant.html

[weatheriscool]

Virginia's fusion power plant: A step toward infinite energy
By Joe Salas
December 22, 2024

No, this isn't the return of Marvel's Iron Man; Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has announced plans to build the world's first grid-scale fusion power plant near Richmond, Virginia.

After over 100 locations around the world were scouted, CFS chose a 100-acre (40.5-ha) plot of land in Chesterfield County in Virginia for the ARC – an acronym for "Affordable, Robust, Compact" – to be built. This fusion power plant aims to produce a continuous 400 megawatts of clean, virtually limitless energy by the early 2030s.

If the name "ARC" rings a bell, it's because it shares the same name as the fictional ARC reactor invented by Marvel Comics' Tony Stark to power his Iron Man suit and more. While Stark's mini fusion reactor was small enough to hold in his hand, the real-world CFS version will be closer to the size of a warehouse. No superhero suit included (yet).
A cutaway render of the ARC, which contains the 100-million-degree Celsius plasma with superconducting magnets

https://newatlas.com/energy/virginia-co ... wer-plant/

[weatheriscool]

Controlling plasma heat in a fusion energy power plant: 'Louvers' on fusion device should exhaust gases as hot as a star
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-plasma-fu ... uvers.html
by US Department of Energy

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is developing a tokamak device called SPARC. The company aims to demonstrate the critical fusion energy milestone of producing more output power than input power for the first time in a device that can scale up to commercial power plant size. However, this achievement is only possible if the plasma doesn't melt the device.

Researchers from CFS and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have collaborated on fusion boundary research through a series of projects, including ORNL Strategic Partnership Projects and Laboratory Directed Research and Development projects, work under the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE), and other work in partnership with General Atomics.

Throughout this collaboration, ORNL has developed simulation capabilities required to address critical and time-sensitive design issues for the SPARC tokamak.

The study, appearing in Nuclear Fusion, evaluated actuator configurations, in particular those used to control neutral gas flowing in and out of the tokamak.

[weatheriscool]

China sets new fusion endurance record of over a thousand seconds
By David Szondy
January 27, 2025

China has achieved a major milestone in the quest for practical commercial fusion power. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei, Anhui Province has set a new record with a 1,066-second sustained fusion reaction.

For 80 years, there has been a concerted effort to turn the incredible destructive power of the hydrogen bomb into a practical source of power. In part, this has been a matter of pure science. In part, it's been a major technical challenge. And, in part, it's been a legacy of Cold War rivalries.

It's been a frustrating enterprise that sometimes seems as far from the goal as it was at the end of the Second World War, but the stakes have been such that today a record US$7.1 billion in private investments have been thrown into the pot. Small wonder. One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel holds 90,000-kWh of energy or the equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal, so the prize is literally unlimited clean energy, or as much as would ever be wanted by humanity, for the rest of time.

https://newatlas.com/energy/china-east- ... 0-seconds/

[weatheriscool]

Helion has $1 billion and 3 years to figure out fusion-powered energy
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
January 29, 2025
https://newatlas.com/energy/helion-1-bi ... an-energy/

Washington-based fusion energy company Helion just raised US$425 million in fresh funding for its bid to be the first to produce usable electricity through nuclear fusion. The firm's latest Series F round brings the total investment into Helion over the $1 billion line, and it's aiming to begin delivering power from a single fusion 50-MW plant to Microsoft by 2028.

The latest injection of funds will be directed towards manufacturing components in-house, including capacitors for energy storage and magnetic coils for its prototype fusion reactor. That follows a $500 million round from back in 2021, and it should help Helion advance its work building a commercial power plant over the next few years.

[wjfox]

France ‘sets new plasma record’ in hunt for nuclear fusion

Wed 19 Feb 2025 08:50 CET

French scientists have reached a ‘crucial milestone’ in the long road towards nuclear fusion by managing to maintain raging-hot plasma for a record 22 minutes, officials have said.

Nuclear fusion has the much-vaunted potential to provide the world with clean, safe and nearly inexhaustible energy – but the scientific holy grail has remained stubbornly elusive over decades.

The idea is to recreate the process that occurs at the heart of stars by fusing two atomic nuclei. This would be the opposite of fission – which splits the atom – currently used in nuclear power plants.

[...]

The WEST tokamak machine in southern France managed to maintain plasma for 1,337 seconds on February 12th, government-funded research organisation the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) said in a statement.

This ‘smashed’ the previous record set in China last month by 25 percent, said the CEA, which runs the tokamak machine.

https://www.thelocal.fr/20250219/france ... ear-fusion



Credit: BORIS HORVAT / AFP

[weatheriscool]

Helion eyes Washington site for 2028 fusion reactor build
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
February 28, 2025
https://newatlas.com/energy/helion-mala ... ashington/

Energy company Helion is inching closer to its goal of firing up the world's first fusion reactor to produce usable electricity. It's currently considering a property in the city of Malaga, Washington, to set up a 50-MW facility and power Microsoft's data centers.

Local media outlet Wenatchee World reported that Helion made an announcement at a press conference on Thursday, laying out its plans to lease a site in Malaga. The prospective project is located within Chelan County, and near the Rock Island Dam on the Columbia river. The land is owned by Chelan County Public Utility District.

The company hasn't yet signed an agreement, or secured the necessary permits. Helion will first invite Malaga residents to a local community event next month, where they can hear from founder David Kirtley and senior employees about their plans for the project.

[weatheriscool]

Deep learning model boosts plasma predictions in nuclear fusion by 1,000 times
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-deep-boos ... usion.html
by JooHyeon Heo, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology

A research team, led by Professor Jimin Lee and Professor Eisung Yoon in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at UNIST, has unveiled a deep learning–based approach that significantly accelerates the computation of a nonlinear Fokker–Planck–Landau (FPL) collision operator for fusion plasma.

The findings are published in the Journal of Computational Physics.