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.
ICIS’23 will be hosted by TRIUMF (www.triumf.ca), Canada’s Particle Accelerator Centre, and following the great experience hosting the virtual conference ICIS’21, we are excited to organize this in-person meeting.
With energy prices on the rise, along with demands for energy independence and an urgent need for carbon-free power, plans to walk away from nuclear energy are now being revised in Japan, South Korea, and even Germany. TAE’s approach, which involves creating a fusion reaction at incredibly high heat, has a key advantage.
The Sun’s surface is 15 million degrees Celsius, which is relatively balmy compared to the 75 million degrees Celsius that TAE Technologies recently generated in July. This temperature benchmark in the company’s current machine, named Norman, demonstrated “unmatched real-time control of plasma.”
Some fusion projects aim to create hundred-million degree working temperatures in magnetically confined plasma. The CEO of TAE Technologies tells us his team’s aiming for 10 times that temperature, targeting cheaper, easier and safer boron fuel.
The world has been watching the many nuclear fusion tokamak experiments with keen interest, but the stage is also set for those who are trying something a bit different, like stellarators and other reactor formats. That’s where TAE Technologies comes in.
Nuclear energy is having a moment. Last month, TAE Technologies Inc., a nuclear fusion company in southern California, raised $250 million. Industry watchers describe the company’s approach, which requires creating a fusion reaction in incredibly high heat, as perhaps the biggest scientific gamble in the field.
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.