Mainstream Toward Nuclear Fusion Edges


ABINGDON, UK – Transforming fusion energy into something commercially viable – and perhaps ultimately, a clean power source that will replace fossil fuels for centuries to come – has long been seen by some as the cutting edge.

However, investor interest in fusion energy continues to grow slowly, and the number of start-ups in this field is growing exponentially, with an estimated 1,100 people in many countries making a living at these companies. An industry is taking shape, with a growing network of companies supplying highly specialized equipment such as the components for powerful magnets required by fusion devices.

The British government recently saw the need to make regulations for fusion energy, a kind of milestone for a thriving industry.

No one knows when fusion energy will become commercially viable, but driving private investment is a rising alarm about global warming.

“No one has a better plan for tackling the climate crisis,” said David Kingham, one of the three co-founders of a company called Tokamak Energy, which has raised around $200 million, mostly from private sources.

In Tokamak Energy, the goal is to eventually make the hydrogen isotopes hot enough so that their atoms combine in a reaction that releases an enormous amount of energy. This is the essence of fusion, often described as the energy behind the sun and stars.

In the company’s lab in a business park outside Oxford, there’s a warning that a public address system test is coming every 15 to 20 minutes, and everyone needs to stay out of the room with the thick and thick fusion device 14 feet high. steel walls. There is a buzzing sound that lasts for about a second. Next, a monitor shows an eerie pulsating video of the inside of the device as a powerful beam explodes into the superheated gas known as plasma.

During the test, Tokamak’s prototype machine, which cost 50 million liras, reached 11 million degrees Celsius. Scientists think they should reach 100 million degrees Celsius, or about seven times the temperature in the sun’s core. They hope to get there by the end of the year.

Otto Asunta, a 40-year-old senior physicist and one of the scientists in the Tokamak control room, said the number of employees has increased tenfold to 180 since he joined the company six years ago, and the job is getting more and more complex.

“The top-notch devices we make,” he said.

The company’s name refers to a type of device that was first invented in the former Soviet Union and is now the main focus in the field. Tokamaks try to achieve fusion by using powerful magnets to trap and compress the superheated gas – creating a kind of lightning in a bottle.

The company was founded in 2009 by scientists who felt they could achieve more in a small, agile company rather than staying in large corporate labs like the British government’s fusion research center in Culham. ITER in Southern France, where a very large device – about 100 feet in diameter – was built at a cost of $25 billion.

At that time the decision was alone; now they have a lot of companies.

Since the early 1990s, the number of fusion initiatives has been growing rapidly. Andrew Holland, CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, says there are at least 35 companies in several countries, including: United States, Britain, France, Canada and China. They’ve raised a total of $1.9 billion, largely from private sources, according to a study by the Association and the British Atomic Energy Agency.

Why would you invest money in a distant quest that hasn’t earned a penny? Investors say they’re tempted by the prospect of early entry into a potentially game-changing technology: a fusion reactor that produces far more energy than what goes into it. Such success could have enormous commercial promise.

David Harding, founder of two investment management firms with holdings estimated at £27m, is one of Tokamak Energy’s key supporters. He said he had long been interested in the idea of ​​”cheap and unlimited energy through scientific magic,” but now “all the driving force of global warming makes it all the more trivial.”

Investors say they’ve already seen gains. Mark White, investment director of the UK Science and Innovation Seed Fund, which gave the Tokamak founders an initial £25,000, said his fund’s total investments of £400,000 are now worth around £7.5, based on prices paid during a capital raise last year. million. With this benchmark, Tokamak Energy’s total value is around £317 million.

Another investor in fusion is Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, that backs Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a spinoff from MIT.

In an interview, Mr. Khosla said that the key to making a decades-old project like fusion delicious to investors is to break the commitment into milestones that investors can follow before investing more money.

The Commonwealth recently announced a successful test what the world says the most The strong version of the magnet type is very important to many fusion efforts, a success that investors are applauding.

“I don’t think we will have any problems getting funding for the next round,” Mr. Khosla said.

Fusion’s supporters say advances in magnets and other areas make the odds of success much greater. “It’s been really tremendous progress,” said Phil Larochelle, investment manager at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which, contrary to its reputation as a long-term industry, has a payback decades later. Breakthrough, a venture capital firm headed by Bill Gates, has also invested in the Commonwealth.

Scientists in the field said the private money flow and the pursuit of different approaches to the problem are positive.

“It’s hard to predict which will win in the end, but there will be a lot of good R&D,” said Jonathan E. Menard, vice president of research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

But fusion executives say the coming years will require huge increases in spending. Tokamak Energy wants to build a $1 billion pilot fusion machine using the powerful magnets it has developed that provide thousands of times the Earth’s gravity. The device can be the core of power plants or the basis for other commercial uses.

Convincing investors to jump from single-digit million-dollar commitments to the $50 million to $100 million bits needed for next-gen prototypes isn’t easy.

“People still measure their return on investment by the usual metrics like how much revenue a company generates,” said Michl Binderbauer, managing director of California-based TAE Technologies, which has raised nearly $900 million. grown by fusion start-ups.

These pressures led Mr. Binderbauer to try to trade in some of the technologies TAE had developed on the way to fusion. A TAE subsidiary is developing treatments for cancer using particle beams. He said startups are an easier sell for investors.

But Fusion’s backers say a tipping point may come when big investors rush to join in. “When money starts to lag behind things, the sky is the limit,” said hedge fund founder Mr. Harding. “There are not many fusion projects in the world, but there are many investors.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *