NAMIC Singapore’s Post

Three Fusion Trends to Watch: 1) Fusion technologies accelerating in Asia through investments and partnerships (learn more in the article below and our APAC 25 report) 2) Increased investor interest in stellarators (see graph below where at least eight stellarator companies recieved funding in 2023!) 3) Novel fusion technologies and configurations continue to raise funding and reach new milestones Key Highlights: -Kyoto Fusioneering recently raises Series C extension round bringing total Series C investment close to $89M and enters various new partnerships -United States and Japan form strategic partnerships to commercialize fusion energy to collaborate on scientific and technical challenges, sharing facilities for research and development, developing international regulatory frameworks and building out supply chains for commercial fusion deployment -KSTAR Research Center at the Korean Institute for Fusion Energy breaks record by sustaining plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds (beating record of 30 seconds previously) -2023 saw a significant increase in investments in stellarators with eight companies receiving private funding including Gauss Fusion, Renaissance Fusion, Type One Energy Group, Proxima Fusion and others. “Stellarators have traditionally been considered too complex to be viable alternatives to tokamaks for fusion, but recent advances in physics understanding, and new tools for optimizing the geometry and engineering – helped by the success of Wendelstein 7-X at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics – now really allow us to take advantage of their benefits in the design of a fusion power plant in the near future.” Richard Kembleton, Gauss Fusion Chief Scientific Officer. -Z-Pinch Fusion Companies are hitting new milestones as Zap Energy achieves electron temperatures of 37 Million C on their sheared flow Z pinch device and Magneto-Inertial Fusion Technology Inc. released a report, supported by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, suggesting that codes predict 7.05MJ of energy can be produced on 20MA pulsed power systems (similar to the configuration at Sandia National Laboratories) Happy to chat about the data used for the graphs if anyone is interested! Read more here: https://hubs.li/Q02wFJ4Q0 #fusion #stellarator #energy

One of the greatest challenges in developing fusion energy is to build a viable wall for the device confining the plasma. Emerging research from PPPL suggests it may be easier to use fusion as a power source if liquid lithium is applied to the internal walls of the device housing the plasma — a hot gas made of electrically charged particles.

What’s coming next for fusion research At our EmTech MIT event this week, I sat down with Kimberly Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She was at the center of the science news world last year, when researchers from the national lab achieved what’s called net energy gain, finally demonstrating that fusion reactions can generate more energy than is used to start them up. After the first successful demonstration of net energy gain, “the first priority was to repeat it,” Budil said. “But the next five shots were duds. They really did not work.” It seemed to be mostly a problem with the targets, those tiny fuel pellets that the lasers shoot at. The targets need to be virtually perfect, with no defects. Making one takes around seven months from start to finish. It wound up taking around six months to repeat the initial success, but over the summer, the lab achieved the highest energy gain to date. The team achieved net energy gain twice more in October. There’s still a lot to learn about fusion, and researchers are trying to do just that with these repeated attempts. On stage, Budil ticked through some of the questions they still had: Could the scientists make changes to the targets? Alter the laser pulse shape? Turn the energy up? I asked her when she thought this energy source might be ready for prime time. “My best guess is that you could have a demo power plant in 20 years,” she told me. Some startups are making bolder claims than that, predicting a decade or less, “but I think the challenges are much more significant than people realized at the beginning. Plasmas are really complicated,” she said. Ultimately, researchers at the national lab won’t be the ones to build a power plant: that’s the role of the private sector, Budil says. But the researchers plan to keep working as part of the growing ecosystem of fusion. Budil counsels a bit of patience as researchers around the world work to reach the next big fusion milestone: “The fusion community is definitely known for its irrational exuberance. My job for the last year has been half to get people excited about big science and public science, and the other half is to manage expectations for fusion energy, because it’s going to be very hard.” https://lnkd.in/e_WYQHKf

Zap Energy reaches new heights in fusion technology with 37-million-degree plasma. by Clarence Oxford - Los Angeles CA (SPX) For the first time, a fusion device has achieved electron temperatures exceeding 37 million degrees Celsius, a milestone that brings it closer to the sun's core temperatures. Zap Energy's sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinch technique marks a significant advancement in fusion technology, offering a scalable, cost-effective approach. This compact device, known as FuZE, has proven its capability by reaching electron temperatures of 1-3 keV, as detailed in a recent study in Physical Review Letters. Ben Levitt, VP of R and D at Zap, highlighted the device's efficiency and the simplicity of its design, which stands in stark contrast to more complex fusion systems. "These results underscore our technological strides and position us alongside leading global fusion devices," he said. The research conducted at Zap Energy's facilities was in collaboration with experts from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California, San Diego. https://lnkd.in/d8z8NPtg

First demonstration of predictive control of fusion plasma by digital twin

☢️ New milestone on the path to accelerate the commercialization of fusion energy in Europe. Gauss Fusion has signed an agreement with TU Munich for the selection of Fusion Power Plant locations in Europe. About Gauss Fusion Gauss Fusion's mission is to accelerate the industrialisation of fusion energy, to make it scalable and to turn it into a reality in Europe. The green energy company was founded in 2022 by private industrial companies from France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It brings together a combination of cutting-edge scientific research and industrial expertise in fusion energy that is unique in Europe. The company is thus playing a key role in shaping a sustainable and independent energy supply in Europe with stable prices and high availability. The founding companies are among the leading European companies in the fusion industry. As such, they have decades of experience, expertise and an extensive track record in the manufacture of components and technologies for the industry. At the same time, Gauss Fusion combines its entrepreneurial and engineering expertise with the excellence of Europe's leading research institutes. The company is closely linked to science and co- operates with renowned research institutes. These include CERN in Switzerland, the Max PlanckInstitute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), ENEA in Italy and Eindhoven University of Technology. #nuclear

#FUSION #INNOVATION || We're rapidly approaching a tipping point in the development of fusion energy: where the remaining barriers are not technological but economic. Case in point: this experiment from 2021 just now published in detail into dramatically cheaper magnets strong enough to contain an ongoing reaction: “Overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40 in one day,” says Professor Dennis Whyte of MIT.

Discover the pivotal role of the JOREK code in advancing our understanding of plasma dynamics within fusion devices. This sophisticated tool is helping scientists simulate complex magneto-hydrodynamic events in tokamaks, bringing us closer to achieving efficient and stable fusion energy. Learn more about how JOREK is shaping the future of fusion research: https://lnkd.in/eahNUkQq #EUROfusion #fusionenergy #road2fusion Thanks to Matthias Hoelzl!

Fusion Breakthrough: Compact New Device Reaches Temperatures of 37 Million Degrees. A new study documents record-breaking electron temperatures in a compact, sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion device - https://lnkd.in/giXJKVTu

Dr. Vick Singh, Director of R&D for Dragonfly Energy Corporation - a company based in Reno, Nevada, & leader in lithium-ion deep cycle batteries - discusses #NMR in battery research in this brief interview: https://lnkd.in/dzC6wJFH Bruker and Dragonfly Energy, collaborate on analytical instruments, including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, to accelerate Dragonfly’s pioneering battery technology research. In fact, NMR can be used to investigate the atomic and molecular structures of battery materials, providing insights into the chemical and physical processes that govern battery performance. This information can help researchers identify the causes of degradation and failure in batteries and develop new electrode materials that are more stable and durable. Read more: https://lnkd.in/daU5x_6e #BatteryResearch #Batteries #LithiumionBattery #DragonflyEnergy #Bruker