Canadian startup General Fusion has been working on its unique approach to producing clean energy through nuclear fusion for two decades, and it's now got something major to show for it. The company announced yesterday that it had created plasma inside its prototype reactor – a major milestone in proving its technology.
This proves General Fusion's Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) prototype reactor, built over the course of 16 months, is working correctly, while employing a rather old-school design to demonstrate its approach.
The technology General Fusion uses dates back to the 1970s and is called Magnetized Target Fusion. Here, a magnetic field and mechanical compression are used to create fusion conditions, aka extreme heat, for compressing plasma inside a reactor to enable the production and extraction of energy. The company says this will lead to a cost-effective method for producing electricity when its finished reactor is up and running.
Many other startups use a different approach called inertial confinement, which uses electric fields to confine the plasma fuel long enough for adequate energy to be released. There's also Helion Energy's magneto-inertial fusion, which combines aspects of the two and is said to be more efficient.
Here's how General Fusion is planning to do things: first, it hits hydrogen isotopes containing extra neutrons called Deuterium and Tritium with electricity. This creates a magnetic field to keep the plasma contained in a chamber. You've also got a liquid 'wall' of lithium that's spinning really fast and creating a cavity in the center. The hydrogen plasma is then injected into this cavity, where steam-powered pistons then push on the lithium wall to compress the plasma, such that it heats up to more than 100 million degrees Celsius. That's when fusion happens: the hydrogen atoms fuse, and release energy.
Watch General Fusion's founder and Chief Science Officer Dr. Michel Laberge explain it far more excitedly.
"We’ve built 24 plasma injectors, created over 200,000 plasmas, and generated fusion neutrons from plasma compressions – de-risking LM26 and preparing us for this new chapter at General Fusion," noted Laberge, when speaking about the company's breakthrough. "We’re ready to make some fusion happen in LM26!"
The prototype is now said to be forming plasmas daily. The next step is to compress plasmas with a lithium liner to create fusion and heating from compression. As TechCrunch noted, LM26 doesn’t yet have a liquid lithium wall, and currently relies on solid lithium compressed by electromagnets. General Fusion has been experimenting with a liquid wall prototype, but there's work to be done yet to integrate it.
The company hopes it will achieve scientific breakeven equivalent – where the fusion reaction produces at least as much power as was delivered directly to the plasma – by 2026. Far beyond that is what's known as commercial breakeven, where the reaction produces more power than the entire fusion facility consumes, and can feasibly deliver electricity for practical usage.
With this milestone, General Fusion is poised to race against the many startups around the world passionately working to make a mini-Sun on Earth. Most recently, we covered US-based Helion Energy's US$425 million funding round, and its plans to build a reactor in Washington so it can supply Microsoft data centers with electricity by 2028.
Source: General Fusion
