Nuclear fusion startup raises $100M to design and build a demo power plant

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-16/bezos-backed-fusion-start-up-raises-100-million-for-demo-system

127 98 7 years ago

It will be interesting to see where this is based, and I am wondering if it will partly be in Singapore. Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek led the funding, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife Ho Ching serves as the chief executive.

Tossrock• 7 years ago

General Fusion is based in British Columbia.

hinkley• 7 years ago

Given the size of Singapore, I think you are far better off with the research facility safely nestled in some corner of British Columbia rather than in your back yard.

patagurbon• 7 years ago

Fusion reactors should be fairly safe, no chance of an explosion or meltdown or whatever AFAIK.

During testing I suppose things could go wrong, but they’d probably be barking up the wrong tree then.

opwieurposiu• 7 years ago

Forget the power, 1.5GWt plant of this design could make almost 5 party balloons per hour worth of helium!

mev_per_fusion = 17.59e6

mev_per_j = 1.602e-19

pwr_thermal = 1.5e9

j_per_fusion = mev_per_fusion * mev_per_j

fusions_per_second = pwr_thermal/j_per_fusion

l_He_per_second = 22.4 * fusions_per_second / 6.02e23

l_per_ballon = 14.1

ballons_per_hr = (l_He_per_second * 60 * 60)/l_per_ballon

trianglem• 7 years ago

I know next to nothing about this. What material is being broken down to create helium?

PureParadigm• 7 years ago

I believe two hydrogens are fused together to create a helium.

ncmncm2• 7 years ago

There are lots of elements that decay by spitting out an alpha particle -- just another name for a helium nucleus.

I am reliably informed that spitting out an He+2 and turning into something chemically other is not fission. Apparently those unstable nuclei that split this way actually had a He nucleus bouncing around in there, and it tunneled out "honestly".

tombert2• 7 years ago

I remember my dad saying about ten years ago that we should flatout stop selling helium to the average consumer until we've really cracked fusion. His reasoning was that helium is used in medicine and quantum computing, which has a whole slew of uses, vs a balloon that some kid is going to lose in five minutes anyway.

It would be pretty neat if we made helium a renewable resource, even if it is slow.

ant6n3• 7 years ago

I'd say more helium is generated in the Earth crust than the potential fusion reactors powering all of humanity. Probably by several orders of magnitude.

Just distill it out of the atmosphere before it escapes into space - it'll be only a small order of magnitude more expensive than today's helium.

DuskStar• 7 years ago

You can make helium with fission, too - in fact that's where almost all of the helium on Earth comes from. Alpha radiation is just a helium nucleus, after all!

lallysingh• 7 years ago

Sounds like a great way to make disillusioned physicists for the financial industry.

cryptonector• 7 years ago

So, a win then. It's like using a fusor[0] not for energy (it can't produce excess energy) but for neutrons. But instead of a physical process, it's an education process. And instead of producing happy physicists it might produce well-paid quants. Awesome!

acqq3• 7 years ago

No new technical details.

The whole article is just about this press release:

https://generalfusion.com/2019/12/general-fusion-closes-65m-...

“General Fusion Closes $65M of Series E Financing“

lwansbrough2• 7 years ago

This is their design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3zcmPmW6dE

acqq3• 7 years ago

One would think that if it were so easy, nobody would bother with magnets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

"If ITER becomes operational, it will become the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use with a plasma volume of 840 cubic meters,[15] surpassing the Joint European Torus by almost a factor of 10."

I fail to find any hint to a reasonable estimation of viability of General Fusion's concept.

Edit: and I mean a written estimation, not that they will now, with the received money, according to their own words, just "formally launch the program" (note they promise just to formally launch the program, nothing more) "to design, construct, and subsequently operate its Fusion Demonstration Plant." Heh.

ksec• 7 years ago

I always had the wrong assumption with General Fusion being privately funded, it was partly owned and invested by General Electric.

Turns out they dont have anything in common apart from the name.

sbierwagen2• 7 years ago

You will be amazed to learn of the existence of General Motors, General Dynamics (and General Atomics) and General Mills, then, all of which are unrelated to GE.

hansdieter1337• 7 years ago

“If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.” - src: My cooperation’s IT scam awareness flyers

TheSoftwareGuy• 7 years ago

ITER has been working on this problem for almost a decade now, and with more money available to them. What are the odds some startup can beat them to the punch?

brobdingnagians• 7 years ago

Happens all the time with other kinds of startups. The main thing with this is having a good skillset and a good idea.

ajross• 7 years ago

A good skillset and a good idea is the "main thing" if you want to make a software product.

What you need with fusion is fundamentally new science, not just an idea to pound into shape. That's rather a taller order than a disruptive crowd-scale gig play in the power industry.

pinewurst• 7 years ago

How can one presume that the multi-national, highly political, very long term ITER program is the definitive source of truth?

starpilot• 7 years ago

Well, GF is using a liquid metal liner to compress their plasma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=77&v=k3zcmPmW6dE...

Oddly, I remember a UFO TV show describing the alien powerplant as relying on liquid metal in some way. No idea if that is meaningful.

JumpCrisscross• 7 years ago

ITER has been working on this problem for almost a decade now

ITER has been working on one implementation of magnetic confinement. It's an international effort, bringing to the battle the advantages of scale and disadvantages of multilateral bureaucracy.

Since ITER was formed in 2007 [1], the bleeding edge has advanced beyond Tokomaks. Advanced computational methods birthed the Wendelstein 7-X [2]. Improved superconducting magnets are compacting designs, reducing costs--and thus accessibility to start-ups--through mass reduction.

It's almost likely a start-up beats ITER. And that's fine! I don't know if any of these designs would be where they are if ITER hadn't been funded.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Organization_history

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X

kirrent2• 7 years ago

You're right about better superconductors leading to more compact and cheaper reactor designs, but many, if not most, of those designs are still tokamaks. To say that the bleeding edge has moved beyond tokamaks is just wrong.

To take your example of Wendelstein 7-X, the only sources I can find give an expected Q factor of 0.1. JET was getting 0.75 ages ago. ITER will hopefully hit 10. While I'm excited about stellarators because they're very interesting to research, they probably won't be catching up to tokamaks any time soon.

Retric• 7 years ago

As odd as it counts ITER is not about efficiency, it’s more about research into construction and operations.

We could have built a fusion reactor in the 90’s simply scaling up JET, but the amount of power that would be produced was not worth the investment. For example we lack the tritium production to keep up with even a single 1GW fusion reactor let alone a large scale deployment. So, we need to be able to produce it or get by with mostly DD reactions.

That’s just one of thousands of issues being investigated.

audunw• 7 years ago

For General Fusion they have a completely different approach. It's not a Tokamak like ITER. It remains to be seen if it works at scale though.

Commonwealth Fusion also thinks they can move faster than ITER with a Tokamak reactor, by utilising new and better superconductors. I suppose the design of ITER was locked down before those became available in large quantities.

wongarsu• 7 years ago

ITER is taking the safest approach, and being a giant international cooperation makes them probably as flexible and nimble as a boulder. A startup betting on a novel, cheaper approach could beat them as long as they accept a much higher risk of failure. And while a government wouldn't invest $100M in something with say 10% chance of success, compared to $6B for ITER that's a worthwile bet for everyone else

2muchcoffeeman2• 7 years ago

And while a government wouldn't invest $100M in something with say 10% chance of success, compared to $6B for ITER that's a worthwile bet for everyone else

Maybe governments should. That’s doesn’t seem like a large amount of money in the scheme of things and I’d rather the tech not belong to a startup.

andygates2• 7 years ago

"Safest" here being the approach that physics and enfineering say is most likely to succeed: project risk, not actual safety risk.

(Ironically it was so large that until it shaken up, the project nearly sank for the usual "megaproject drama" reasons)

ArtWomb• 7 years ago

I'll link to the NAS report on fusion findings. US benefits from ITER partnerships work both ways. But also recommends investments in smaller, less expensive, more innovative (and therefore competitive) designs.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...

Just to put things in perspective. ITER budget is estimated ~$25B. Seeking to produce >500MW with a 12T magnetic field. Massive radius. Twice any previous tokamak size. Just look at the pictures ;)

JET budget was ~$5B total. And achieved 25MW with a 5T coil. But without actually "burning plasma" (Max Q < 1.0)

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab run by DoE budget is >$100M per annum. So this represents a significant challenge, and not just in fund raising.

The most promising space might be in the design of "mini-magnets"

https://nationalmaglab.org/news-events/news/lbc-project-worl...

dnautics2• 7 years ago

technically, they are persuing a completely different mechanism. In my opinion it's totally bonkers, but in principle there is no reason why the spend/return should be correlated.

andrewmutz• 7 years ago

Offtopic, sorry: How does everyone read these paywalled articles? Surely you all dont subscribe to bloomberg?

thinkloop• 7 years ago

They really need to get one giant paywall, It doesn't make sense to subscribe to 15 different sources for $300/month

spellcard199• 7 years ago

Disable javascript or use a browser that doesn't run it. I am an emacs user so its browser, eww, works for me.

jseliger• 7 years ago

NoScript is a great addition to Firefox. I kept reading recommendations for it and when I finally installed it I wondered why I'd waited so long.

indysigners• 7 years ago

In iOS you can make use of Reader mode, just click on the Hamburger-like icon to the left side of the URL.

neonate• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/TJMMKD

Tomminn• 7 years ago

A very well timed press of the escape key, between when the text has started booting and the paywall has started booting. You do it earlier than you'd think.

Hammershaft• 7 years ago

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

fidla• 7 years ago

I don't understand why they need to raise money if it's backed by Bezos?

lucasmullens• 7 years ago

Lots of companies are backed by billionaires and still have many investors.

yummypaint2• 7 years ago

To underscore how challenging magnetic fusion is, here is a thought experiment: imagine you have a ring collider system that collides d with t at the energy which maximizes the probability of fusion. Assume the ions circulate with 0 energy loss except by colliding with the other species of ions. When an ion loses energy in this way, assume its kinetic energy is immediately restored with perfect efficiency. Assume fusion energy is recovered with 100% efficiency. Even with this super idealized head-on collision setup you wouldn't recover enough fusion energy to power the accelerator.

OnlineGladiator• 7 years ago

imagine you have a ring collider system

I'm pretty sure you already lost most people here that isn't a physicist.

BitwiseFool• 7 years ago

Imagine you have a giant magnet and using it makes you lose money.

MattPalmer1086• 7 years ago

That doesn't really help me understand how challenging it is.

You say that a ring collider would be useless as a fusion energy source. I've never heard of a proposal to use a ring collider to create fusion energy, they're for investigating particle physics.

So I'm left none the wiser - what am I missing?

sbierwagen2• 7 years ago

Where are you losing power from then, bremsstrahlung?

yummypaint2• 7 years ago

This assumess brem from the ring itself is negligible. Energy loss is from any interaction between ions that doesnt result in fusion. This includes stuff that would scatter ions out of the beam in reality, but in the charitable model its assumed their momenta are immediately reset to the most desirable value with perfect efficiency. In reality this would not be possible due to phase space considerations (Liouville theorem)

lwansbrough2• 7 years ago

The founder of General Fusion was somebody who lived in the same small island community as me. He's a true hacker. Very eccentric. If I recall correctly, he bought the old gas station which was on the main street of the island and that's where he brought his prototype to life. I think people were surprised to learn that the eccentric mad scientist was working on nuclear experiments next to their homes :)

mmartinson• 7 years ago

Which island is it?

coolspot2• 7 years ago

according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Laberge it is British Columbia.

ggm• 7 years ago

Given $b investment opportunities, $m investment makes me think this remains long-range, high risk research. I don't see this as evidence "fusion on earth for power is now real"

Whats real, is that a lot of money is sloshing around in the hands of people who are more motivated to put it into this kind of venture, than before. Space sucked up some of it, but now space is proven to be a viable investment choice, higher risk money has to look somewhere else.

PlasticTank• 7 years ago

How do people think nuclear fusion will affect renewable energies when it comes to maturity? Does this technology make solar and wind some what redundant?

ant6n3• 7 years ago

Fusion will probably be more expensive, but provide a consistent base supply.

zaarn4• 7 years ago

Fusion is more expensive to construct reactors for, but once we have figured out how to do it, the cost will go down rapidly. The fuel for reactors is abundant and cheap, it would effectively end producing power by digging up minerals of any type.

Renewable energies will probably survive for a while but eventually it'll be all fusion. In my opinion, the production of fusion energy will be so cheap that it would be more cost effective to just dump the energy, hence the spikes in power consumption can be compensated by running more reactors and dumping the excess.

74ls002• 7 years ago

Nah, the excess will be used for desalination; especially in parts of the world where potable water is less abundant

pfdietz7• 7 years ago

Why do you think the cost will go down rapidly? Fusion reactors are going to be very big, much bigger than fission reactors of the same power output, and also much more complex. Where does this expectation of them being cheap come from?

andygates2• 7 years ago

It it's cheap, sure.

It's probably not going to be that cheap, so it will instead replace all that fossil power.

Renewables are also quick to scale out, and low impact to decommission, so there's no loss in keeping on accelerating wind farm deployment.

pfdietz7• 7 years ago

Fusion will have no effect whatsoever, even if it is made to "work". The cost will be exorbitant.

ncmncm2• 7 years ago

I hope they can get $100M of power out of it before they have to decommision and bury the whole thing.

Doesn't seem likely, though.

pfdietz7• 7 years ago

I used to have a favorable impression of what General Fusion was doing.

Their approach addressed one of the big engineering problems facing fusion: have materials that can withstand the power/area across the surface of the reactor, and particularly stand up to neutron and energetic charged particle bombardment of the reactor structure.

Their first approach involved putting a plasmoid (spheromak, as I recall) in a cavity in a bath of liquid metal (lithium say), then launching a focused shock wave inward to compress the cavity and the plasma to very high density. There would be no solid reactor component exposed to the radiation from the plasma (a thick layer of liquid lithium would be interposed in all directions), and the peak pressure could be much higher than structural materials could withstand (because the compression and reaction would occur on time scale short compared to the time required for a sound wave to propagate across the liquid.)

But it turned out this approach was fatally flawed.

While they had trouble with confinement, the big problem is that to get that fast a reaction, very high density, and therefore very strong magnetic fields (magnetic pressure goes as magnetic field squared) would be required. Peak fields in their first approach would be as high as 700 T. But this would imply very large currents would be flowing in the liquid metal compressing the magnetized plasma. Beyond ~100 T, these current would be so strong that the surface of the metal would be vaporized, and non-conducting metal vapor would flow into and quench the plasma. Game over.

So, they've gone to a slow scheme. The implosion is now subsonic, and also there's a metal post running down the center of the chamber to increase stability. But this ruins the main attractive feature of their concept. That metal post will be subject to orders of magnitude higher average neutron flux than the walls of typical fusion concepts, and will also be crushed with magnetic pressure from 100 T magnetic fields. The engineering to make this work would be beyond heroic. The subsonic compression also means the entire reactor vessel will experience very high pressures, even if the rest of it is shielded from the radiation.

Nuclear fusion startup raises $100M to design and build a demo power plant

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