Energy

TAE makes world-first readings of magnetically-confined hydrogen-boron fusion

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The TAE team with their impressive fifth-generation "Norman" fusion reactor prototype
TAE Technologies
The Large Helical Device at Japan's National Institute for Fusion Science – a massive superconducting stellarator
NIFS
Inside the Large Helical Device at Japan's NIFS
NIFS
The TAE team with their impressive fifth-generation "Norman" fusion reactor prototype
TAE Technologies
The sixth-gen "Copernicus" reactor is expected within a few years, and the company says it'll demonstrate net power gain
TAE Technologies
TAE’s VP of Operations Hiroshi Gota and Senior Director of Physics R&D Richard Magee traveled to the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) in Japan to participate in a joint experiment on the Large Helical Device in 2022. TAE is proud to partner with NIFS in the pursuit of hydrogen-boron fusion as we work to develop commercial fusion power with the cleanest and most affordable fuel cycle for fusion, p-B11. Image inside the control room, from left: Magee, Gota, Prof. Mitsutaka Isobe, Prof. Kunihiro Ogawa, and Prof. Masaki Osakabe collecting data from the LHD Control Room, and Prof. Satoshi Ohdachi participated in the experiment remotely.
TAE Technologies
High-energy protons hit boron powder particles in the experimental setup
TAE Technologies
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Most current fusion power projects require tritium – an incredibly scarce and problematic fuel. TAE is targeting cheaper, safer hydrogen-boron (H-B) fusion, and it's just announced a world-first measurement of H-B fusion in magnetically confined plasma.

We've spoken to this California company before about its impressive progress and ambitious plans in the fusion power space. With more than US$1.2 billion in investments behind it, TAE has come in ahead of schedule with results from its fifth-generation fusion device, called Norman, which was designed to sustain plasma at 30 million °C (54 million °F), but which has already broken through 75 million °C (135 million °F).

Check out our TAE interview story from 2022 for lots of background on why the company is going with hydrogen-boron, how the process will differ from tritium-based designs, the design, advantages and evolution of TAE's prototype capped-cylinder fusion reactors, and to learn exactly why hundred-million-degree temperatures aren't going to cut the mustard in a hydrogen-boron reactor – TAE is targeting billion-degrees-plus plasma confinement by the early 2030s, many times hotter than what tritium reactors will require.

Today, TAE is celebrating the publishing of a peer-reviewed paper in the well-respected journal Nature Communications, documenting the world's first measurement of hydrogen-boron fusion in magnetically confined plasma. That's highly specific for a reason; the authors note that H-B fusion has already been measured in laser-produced plasmas, and in particle accelerators through beam-target fusion. But these environments can't tell TAE much about how H-B fusion and its products will behave and proliferate in a magnetically-confined plasma like the ones they'll use in their reactors.

The Large Helical Device at Japan's National Institute for Fusion Science – a massive superconducting stellarator
NIFS

The experiments were done as part of a partnership with Japan's National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), home to the world's largest superconducting plasma confinement device and the world's second-largest stellarator: the Large Helical Device, or LHD.

It's not specifically designed to pursue hydrogen-boron fusion, but the project took advantage of the fact that the LHD already features a system to inject boron or boron nitride into the plasma. Generally, it's injected as a way to condition the walls of the containment vessel, clear up impurities, reduce turbulence and improve plasma confinement, and to bump up the electron density of the plasma – but the team realized that boron was also accumulating in the middle of the plasma, at enough of a density that measurable amounts of H-B fusion could be expected when high-energy protons are fired into the plasma.

So, TAE went and put together a system, based around a Passivated Implanted Planar Silicon (PIPS) detector, to detect the alpha particles (or helium nuclei) that would result from H-B fusion in the LHD's chamber. And sure enough, the PIPS machine detected over 150 times more alpha particle pulses when the boron injection and high-energy proton beams were both switched on.

High-energy protons hit boron powder particles in the experimental setup
TAE Technologies

“This experiment offers us a wealth of data to work with, and shows that hydrogen-boron has a place in utility-scale fusion power," said Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies. "We know we can solve the physics challenge at hand and deliver a transformational new form of carbon-free energy to the world that relies on this non-radioactive, abundant fuel."

Research of this nature will continue, hoping to find ways to increase the fusion gain, among other things. And TAE will continue to iterate its own devices, with a "Copernicus" reactor scheduled for "mid-decade" that TAE expects will be able to harvest more energy than it takes to run. By the early 2030s, the company expects its "Da Vinci" machine to be up and running, which it says will be the world's first prototype H-B fusion power plant, connected to the grid and feeding in power.

Learn more about TAE and its plans in the video below.

The paper is open-access at the journal Nature Communications.

Source: TAE

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10 comments
anthony88
The line, "Fire up the Passivated Implanted Planar Silicon detector, Scotty" was in Series 2, Episode 4 of Star Trek but was edited out.
1stClassOPP
So, up to now, it takes more energy to make this fusion happen, than it returns? What on earth can contain one million degrees of heat?
Rocky Stefano
Sounds like they have everyone beat. I know it's the job of a CEO to blow some fairy dust on the tech. Let's hope he's right.
michael_dowling
1stClassOPP: What contains these reactions is magnetic confinement. No physical material could withstand such high temps. And by the way,in this business,one million degrees is child's play,lukewarm. These people are aiming for reaction temps of a BILLION degrees.
A.L.
EVERY form of electric generation except solar panels involves turning a turbine connected to a magnet inside a set of coils that induces electrons to flow through the wires of that coil. And every means of turning that turbine except hydropower, tidal power and wind involves generating heat to boil water into steam.

WHY, then, should it take a billion, degrees, 75-million degrees or even 50,000 degrees to simply boil water, when a couple of thousand will do very nicely, thank you? Using thermonuclear fusion to boil that water is like using a sledgehammer to drive a staple through a half-dozen sheets of paper. This decades-long, utterly quixotic quest to harness fusion has clearly been driven by the need for soaking governments for the billions of dollars squandered on on its endless development, and not actual need.
michael_dowling
a.l. : No,some fusion approaches are designed to generate power directly from the fusion reaction. The mention of boron reminded me of New Atlas report from about a year ago,which involved the direct conversion of the fusion process into power: https://newatlas.com/energy/hb11-laser-fusion-demonstration/ Viewing the TAE Technologies video,it sounds like a similar approach to that of HB-11.
drzarkov99
What most people don't grasp about the billion degree temperature is that the plasma at that temperature is at such low density, suspended in a vacuum by magnetic forces, that the heat production is relatively mild. The hydrogen-boron reaction produces helium atoms and energetic electrons, directly producing power without producing neutrons that make tritium based reactors radioactive. No intermediate steam process required.
TpPa
the sun does it at 15 million F. whats up?
MeOnNewAtlas
My question is this; all machinery breaks at some point in time, so what does an industrial accident look like at 1 billion degrees Celsius?
Theodore G.
@MeOnNewAtlas
>what does an industrial accident look like at 1 billion degrees Celsius?
Could be like the 3.000 degree sparks from a flint stone that touch your hands.
Do not confuse heat with temperature.