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Type One Energy announced on May 27 that it had successfully completed the first formal design review of Infinity Two, which is based on the world’s only implementable, peer-reviewed physics […]
The post Type One Energy Completes Formal Initial Design Review of Fusion Power Plant appeared first on POWER Magazine.
A leading nuclear science and technology group in Canada, along with the investment arm of one of the country’s top banks, said they together would invest about CA$ 20 million ($ 14.6 […]
The post Canadian Groups Invest Millions to Support Commercial Fusion Energy appeared first on POWER Magazine.
A global professional services and project management company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, announced it has been chose to develop the pre-concept design for a nuclear fusion pilot plant (FPP). The […]
The post Group Selected to Develop Pilot Nuclear Fusion Plant appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Fusion occurs when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom, such as when two hydrogen atoms fuse to form one helium atom. A tremendous amount of energy is released in the process.
This is the same process that powers the sun. In the sun’s core, where temperatures reach 15,000,000C, hydrogen atoms are in a constant state of agitation. As they collide at very high speeds, the natural electrostatic repulsion that exists between the positive charges of their nuclei is overcome and the atoms fuse. Without fusion, there would be no life on Earth.
Significant research has been done to better understand the fusion process since the concept was first theorized in the 1920s. Scientists have answered most of the key physics questions behind fusion. Today, in southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the world’s largest tokamak—a magnetic fusion device designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.
The ITER project (Figure 1), as it is known, is expected to be the first fusion device to produce “net energy,” which is the term used when the total power produced during a fusion plasma pulse surpasses the thermal power injected to heat the plasma.…
The post Groups Announce Successful Test to Advance Fusion Energy appeared first on POWER Magazine.
A company working to bring fusion energy technology to market joined with a group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in announcing a successful test of what they call the world’s strongest high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet, technology considered key for development of commercial fusion energy.
Representatives of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), along with researchers from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), on Sept. 8 outlined the group’s progress in developing the HTS, what they called a “world changing” technology to produce power while also combating climate change.
The milestone test, conducted at the PSFC on Sept. 5, proved that the magnet built at scale can reach a sustained magnetic field of more than 20 tesla. That’s enough to enable CFS’s small tokamak device, called SPARC, to achieve net energy from fusion, what the groups called “a historic first.” They said the successful demonstration proves that the SPARC will be the world’s first fusion device that can create and confine a plasma that produces more energy than it consumes.…
The post Breakthrough: Laser-Powered Fusion Experiment Nears ‘Ignition’ appeared first on POWER Magazine.
An experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) appears to have approached fusion ignition as it recreated the extreme temperatures and pressures at the heart of the sun for a tiny fraction of a second. The momentous step has fueled new optimism for fusion energy.
The experiment on Aug. 8 “was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF—the size of three football fields—onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second,” LLNL reported on Aug. 18. It achieved a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ)—and initial analysis suggests this is an eightfold improvement over experiments conducted in spring 2021, and an increase of 25 times over NIF’s 2018 record yield.
The production of that energy—which is more than any previous inertial confinement fusion experiment—proves ignition is possible, said experts from the Imperial College London, which are part of the “very large team” of industry and academia that has worked over many decades to demonstrate ignition.…