For a field that has existed for more than 60 years, a lot has happened in fusion research in the last half-decade. In fusion’s case, a trio of technological advances converged in the early 2010s to unleash a wave of innovation. “I think you see this beautiful inflection point in this field where the science maturity and technical capability come together,” said Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE Technologies.
Some companies are exploring different fuels as well as different designs. California-based TAE Technologies, which has been in business since 1998, is building a nuclear reactor that’s designed to fuse hydrogen with boron-11 by colliding plasma “smoke rings” inside a long, cigar-shaped chamber. This setup would need to hit temperatures even higher than those in tokamaks. But if scaled-up versions work, they could generate electricity without the neutron fusillade.
Our current domestic electrical grids are woefully inept to integrate necessary renewable energy sources. The answer to solving this problem lies within a new approach to energy use: one that focuses on optimizing the way customers and their technologies interact with the grid.
Hoping to ride the green-energy wave to a carbon-free future, energy companies are taking fusion from the lab to the grid—and promise to do so with machines that are far smaller and cheaper than previous iterations, based on the use of technologies and materials not available in the past, and often, on simpler designs.
The move allows the parent company to focus on its fusion, and the new entity to focus on its battery technology for vehicles and renewable storage facilities.
With more than a dozen companies working on different designs to trigger and control fusion reactions, researchers have also come up with innovative systems that can be used in applications from medicine to industrial imaging to electric vehicles. Creating businesses around these products can generate revenue now that will help support the end-goal of a fusion power plant, said Michl Binderbauer, chief executive officer of TAE Technologies Inc.
Fusion is another zero-emissions alternative to fossil fuels and radioactive nuclear energy
With commercialization years away, investors flock to technology’s long-term clean-energy potential
Michl Binderbauer is chief executive of a southern California firm that aims to create almost limitless energy through nuclear fusion, a starry goal that at times struck some prospective investors as futuristic.
On Wednesday, U.S. Representative Young Kim (CA-40), U.S. Representative Don Beyer (VA-08), and U.S. Representative Mike Levin (CA-49) visited TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion energy company. Rep. Beyer founded and co-chairs the bipartisan fusion energy caucus in 2021, which is touring energy facilities across California.
TAE Power Solutions’ new offices in Dudley will be a battery prototype-and-test facility to develop, validate, and industrialize modular battery packs for e-mobility and energy storage.
As fusion developers around the world race to commercialize fusion energy, TAE Technologies has pioneered the pursuit of the cleanest and most economical path to providing electricity with hydrogen-boron (also known as p-B11 or p11B), an abundant, environmentally sound fuel. Today the company is announcing, in collaboration with Japan’s National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), a noteworthy research advancement: the first-ever hydrogen-boron fusion experiments in a magnetically confined fusion plasma.
TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion energy company, today announces the formation of TAE Power Solutions, a new subsidiary. TAE Power Solutions intends to deliver a first-of-its-kind technology to fundamentally improve the reliability, efficiency, longevity, and affordability of electric-powered products, from vehicles to renewable energy storage.
Today we congratulate our colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, many of whom we’ve known and worked alongside for decades in the pursuit of fusion.
The scientific break-even advancement represents a theory made reality. Fusion has long been dubbed the “holy grail” of clean energy and this advance brings us one step closer to true viability. Today’s net energy milestone validates a major breakthrough for the entire global field of fusion.