TAE Technologies, the world’s largest private fusion energy company, has announced a landmark fusion technology milestone by producing stable plasma at 50M+ degrees Celsius in a proprietary compact reactor design that can scale to competitive fusion-generated power.
The goal of economic power generation from fusion has been elusive, but that hasn’t deterred researchers from exploring ways to develop the technology in a way that would support commercial electricity production.
POWER magazine has covered the evolution of fusion research and development for many years, and nuclear experts now think we could be just years—not decades—away from commercial applications.
April 2021 | E. M. Granstedt | Review of Scientific Instruments | Paper
The C-2W device (“Norman”) [Gota et al., Nucl. Fusion 59, 112009 (2019)] has produced and sustained beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasmas embedded in a magnetic mirror geometry using neutral beams and end-bias electrodes located in expander divertors.
April 2021 | M. Tobin | Review of Scientific Instruments | Paper
The C-2W device (also known as “Norman”) at TAE Technologies has proven successful at generating stable, long-lived field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasmas with record temperatures.
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March 2021 | T. Roche | Review of Scientific Instruments | Paper
In TAE Technologies’ current experimental fusion device, C-2W, record breaking, advanced beam-driven FRC plasmas are produced and sustained in steady state utilizing variable-energy neutral beams, expander divertors, end-bias electrodes, and an active plasma control system.
Michl Binderbauer, CEO of the privately funded alternative fusion developer TAE Technologies, applauds the report’s emphasis on public–private partnerships. “You are combining the strength of a DOE lab or university program with the end-product focus of the private sector,” he says, rather than the “more meandering” academic process. “A tighter adherence to schedules will help to drive efficiency in the process.”