Review of thermonuclear startups in the world
I think it would be very useful to make an overview of startups working in the field of thermonuclear energy. Why startups, not university research teams, say? A start-up is a form of project organization with a clearly defined practical goal, and this form allows for the most rigorous and precise testing of various ideas with practice. At that time, the task of science as a whole is the extraction of knowledge without any special sorting into “useful” and “useless” (once useless knowledge that current in the wire causes the appearance of a magnetic field determines our life today).
Thank you for helping to create an article for Andrey Gavrilov.
I will try not only to list startups, but also to evaluate their “advancement” on this main road - from the idea of operating thermonuclear power stations built on the basis of this idea. In addition, I will give a brief description of the attitude of the expert community to a particular concept of a thermonuclear reactor. In order to assess technological maturity, I propose to put points from 1 to 7 in accordance with this label
Well let's start with something well known
1. Organization: ITER .
Technical level: 6.1.
Project start year: 1992
Key people: Dr. Bernard Bigot, Dr. Robert Aymar, Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, Dr. Gunter Janeschitz, Dr. Osamu Motojima, Dr. Won namkung.
→ Site
Description of the concept: The classic tokamak is a toroidal chamber for the magnetic confinement of thermonuclear plasma. On this concept, the maximum Q (the ratio of the heating power to the fusion power) has been achieved, far ahead of other ideas. ITER is the most advanced thermonuclear reactor, allowing to obtain stable burning thermonuclear plasma. However, the project is not actually a start-up aimed at practical benefits, which does not allow it to be compared with other participants in this list.
Expert position: Tokamaks have shown themselves to be the most successful idea of a fusion reactor, but it has fundamental limitations that practically do not allow working with another, besides DT thermonuclear reaction, and also today we can see great engineering difficulties in creating industrial power reactors based on this concept (density power at the diverter, breakdown, stability of the structure under neutron radiation, etc.).
2. Organization: Tri Alpha Energy
Technical level: 4.0
Project start year: 1998
Key people: Dr. Michl Binderbauer, Sergey Putvinsky, Norman Rostoker.
→ Site
Description of the concept: Beam driven FRC - confinement of a plasma vortex called the FRC using tangentially injected neutral beams. Neutral bundles also provide part of the synthesis. The concept is distinguished by very successful physics, which theoretically allows one to master not only the DT and DD reactions, but also pB11. In turn, pB11 means an almost complete (as compared to DT) absence of radioactive waste, a widespread cheap fuel, and engineering simplicity of a reactor. Another advantage is the lower power compared to tokamaks, at which the reactor “converges”. By minus can be attributed much less knowledge and possible pitfalls. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: The idea of Norman Rostoker from the mid-90s was tested by the TAE team in the 2000s and turned out to be working. In particular, the FRC hold time was raised from hundreds of microseconds to tens of milliseconds, scaling was found. Currently, TAE has recruited ~ 500 million investment, has a team that includes many “stars” of controlled thermonuclear fusion.
TAE scaling shows very serious progress and the possibility of achieving the stated goals.
3. Organization: Hellion Energy
Technical level: 2.5
Project start year: 2005
Key people: Dr. John Slough, Chris Pihl, Dr. George Votroubek
→ Site
Concept description: The idea of Norman Rostoker again - two FRC vortexes are accelerated by the magnetic system, collide, transferring kinetic energy to heat, and are compressed (by another) by the magnetic system to thermonuclear parameters. Pulsed reactor.
Expert position: It is believed that an energy reactor based on this concept is very difficult to construct both from the point of view of physics and from the point of view of engineering. However, the founders of Hellion Energy are full of optimism, and recently they have moved from working out the elements of a plasma machine to building a reactor that should test the scalability of the idea. One of the dark horses of the market. Humorous assessment of the complexity of this concept from the author of another concept in this list.
4. Organization: General Fusion
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 2002
Key people: Dr. Michel Laberge, Michael Delage
→ Site
Concept description: An idea that is somewhat similar to the previous one is the adiabatic compression of two encountered FRCs. However, here the compressive medium is a giant drop of liquid metal, in which a converging spherical wave is excited by steam hammers (!). ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: This concept has a long history of the development of “implosion by metal liners of magnetized plasma targets,” and its legs grow from the 1972 LINUS project. The idea is not bad on paper, but little studied experimentally. This is also evident from General Fusion - the startup has already been fairly well funded for about 10 years (collected more than 130 million dollars), and was supposed to reach the technical level of ~ 3 4 years ago according to plans. However, almost every element of the machine causes difficulties and the R & D chain, problems multiply, and the future becomes more vague. Currently, the achievement of the technical level 3 is planned in 2021.
5. Organization: Compact Fusion Reactor (Lockheed Martin)
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 2010
Key people: Dr. Tom McGuire, Mr. Charles Chase
→ Site
Concept description: Open trap with intraplasma dipoles. It allows, like all open traps, to achieve a high proportion of the use of magnetic field pressure (as opposed to tokamaks), which means that the reactions DD, DHe3 are available.
Expert position: In fact, this type of magnetic trap conceptually goes back to the 60s, and was thoroughly studied theoretically and experimentally. But it seems that the CFR team does not know the history, therefore it is filling many lumps on its own. Interestingly, the initial plans to create a reactor “which fits in the truck” have already been discarded, and the dimensions of the minimum reactor have grown to 7x22 meters. If you further extrapolate the experience with this concept to the CFR team, then soon they should find out that putting superconducting coils right inside the running thermonuclear reaction, to put it mildly, is not engineering, and this concept most likely will not be able to get out of the laboratory this time.
6. Organization: Tokamak Energy
Technical level: 3.2
Project start year: 2009
Key people: Jonathan Carling, David Kingham, Michael Graznevitch
→ Site
Description of the concept: The spherical tokamak is a geometric “rounded” ordinary tokamak, in which physics favors a simpler obtaining of a thermonuclear reaction. It is a fairly well-developed concept - there are 22 research spherical tokamaks in the world, at the largest of which the conditions Q ~ 0.1 are obtained ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: Spherical tokamak promises ignition under simpler conditions and smaller size, and at first glance it is much easier and cheaper to make an industrial reactor. However, compressed geometry means an engineering nightmare and more intense working conditions of the structure, in particular in the central column, which can mean simple and fast progress to technical level 5 and a complete impasse further.
7. Organization: Applied Fusion Systems
Technical level: 2.2
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Richard Dinan, Dr. James lambert
→ Site
Description of the concept: Also spherical tokamak.
Expert position: A recently-emerging startup with unclear prospects and not yet showing any hardware. One of the creators is the TV star.
8. Organization: EMCC
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 1987
Key people: Dr. Jaeyoung Park, Dr. Paul Sieck, Dr. Robert W. Bussard
→ Site
Description of the concept: Electrostatic confinement of the Polywell type - in the center of the chamber a cloud of electrons is created and held by a magnetic field, to which deuterium ions are attracted, accelerate and collide with each other with a thermonuclear reaction. Conceptually this is a virtual cathode fuzor.
Expert position: There are strong doubts that such a construction is efficient in the sense of a positive energy output, however, it is attractive to those who like ease of implementation, and “improving” polyvials usually resembles a scientific method. EMCC has been sucking money from the US Navy for similar activities for many decades, showing zero progress.
9. Organization: Convergent Scientific Inc
Technical level: 1.5
Project start year: 1987
Key people: Mr. Devlin Baker, Dr. Joel Rogers, Dr. Matt moynihan
→ Site
Description of the concept: Too polywell, like the previous startup.
Expert position: At the moment, this company seems to have died, although it has not been officially announced.
10. Organization: Fusion One
Technical level: 1.5
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Mr. Randal Volberg, Dr. Scott cornish
→ Site
Description of the concept: Too polywell, like the previous startup.
Expert position: A startup with the most dubious prospects - both in the chosen concept and in the competences of the founders. But there are pictures of “gigawatt polywell with the size of 5.5x5.5x5.5 meters” (that is, the density of the removed thermonuclear energy is proposed to be 16.1 MW / m ^ 2 - several times steeper than ITER).
11. Organization: Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Fusion
Technical level: 2.8
Project start year: 1998
Key people: Eric Lerner, Dr. Syed Hassan, Dr. Robert Terry
→ Site
Concept description: Plasma focus is one of the first thermonuclear reactor ideas. In an end coaxial electric discharge, instabilities cause a strong compression of the plasma pinch, leading to the achievement of thermonuclear conditions.
Expert position: Plasma focus has long been used as a technology for producing thermonuclear neutrons, incl. similar devices are used as pulsed neutron sources in nuclear bombs. The technical level of the “plasma focus” achieved in military research centers in the USA and Russia is immeasurably higher than LPPX shows. In particular, the total current of military installations is much higher. From this, we can conclude that the startup does not have any prospects for creating a fusion reactor, otherwise this approach would have been used by TCB specialists in the state salary.
12. Organization: First Light Fusion
Technical level: 1.1
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Paul Hoolligan.
→ Site
Description of the concept: Collapse of a spherical target with a thermonuclear fuel passing a high-speed shock wave in a liquid.
Expert position: At the moment, this is practically an unsubstantiated bare concept, however, it has received some money for experimental verification.
This is where classic startups developing their ideas for private investors' money and grants come to an end, but there are a few more projects that can be a start-up at any moment, and it’s worth mentioning them:
Project: CT Fusion (Dynomak)
Technical level: 2.0
Key people: Dr. Tom Jarboe, Dr. Aaron Hossack, Mr. Derek suterland
→ Site
Description of the concept: Magnetic trap, where the plasma holds itself with a complexly twisted frozen magnetic field. According to the creators, this concept can be brought to thermonuclear parameters. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: A university project that tried to become a tokamak, and painted rapid progress to a power station. The advantage of the concept is the lack of a large and heavy magnetic system, a minus, apparently, unclear prospects for scaling.
Project: Hyper-V + The PLX
Technical level: 2.0
Key people: Dr. Scott Hsu, Dr. Doug Witherspoon,
→ Site
Concept description: Another variant of compression of a magnetized target by a liner, in this case a plasma of heavy noble gases. In some ways similar to General Fusion. The spherical plasma DT target should be compressed by plasma beams arriving from all directions, which are generated by plasma guns.
Expert position: A moderately interesting concept that has been finding money for experiments in US nuclear laboratories for about 10 years. Of all the impulse concepts, it has the advantage of a completely gas target and drivers, which allows it does not care about making a new target and harvesting old fragments 10 times a second. On the other hand, from the point of view of compression parameters, this experiment has not shown much progress for 5-7 years, but it shows progress in complicating the planned reactor — the path that most often leads to the cemetery of thermonuclear concepts.
Project: MIT ARC
Technical level: 2.5
Key people: BNSorbom, J.Ball, TRPalmer, FJMangiarotti
→ Site
Concept description: Another option tokamak: with a strong field. By increasing the magnetic field by 2 times (which is very difficult engineering) you can get a gain in power in the same volume of plasma by 16 times. Conceptually, problems with the first wall and the divertor are exacerbated here, but the gain is noticeable by eye. Unfortunately, there were few tokamaks with a strong field in the world, and this direction still requires its intermediate installations. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: ARC from the plasma laboratory of the famous university MIT is a fusion of bright ideas - high-field tokamak with collapsible high-temperature superconducting magnets, liquid-salt blanket, reduction of current maintenance systems, etc. Unfortunately, all this splendor makes it possible to draw a very cool car that easily lays ITER on the shoulder blades, but in reality it may take decades of research and development and finding problems that lead tokamaks with a strong field to a dead end in exactly the same way as traditional ones. For example, not so long ago, it was discovered that a conductive fluid that is pumped across a strong magnetic field can form reverse flow currents — such finds make it necessary to completely revise the idea of creating simple liquid-salt blankets.
Project: NumerEx
Technical level: 1.5
Key people: Dr. Scott Hsu, Dr. Doug Witherspoon
→ Site
Concept description: Another representative of concepts with compression of magnetized plasma, in fact, resuscitation of the 1972 LINUS idea. In a rapidly rotating cylindrical cavity, liquid metal is poured (molten NaK or Li), which is scattered by centrifugal force along the walls and there is an empty channel in the center. A magnetized plasma target is injected into the channel, and with the help of gas pistons, the metal is displaced closer to the center, collapsing the channel and compressing the plasma target.
Expert position: The concept of LINUS and its development in NumerEx from the point of view of physics is quite good. However, even basic experimental installations require complex engineering — a record of several parameters of gas valves, large rotating machines, integration of all this with high vacuum and delicate plasma injectors. The path to scaling concepts for scaling is not cheap and not fast. From this point of view, the creative rethinking and engineering optimization carried out by General Fusion looks like a very correct job, which is very difficult to outdo.
Project: GDML
Technical level: 3.5
Key people: A.A. Ivanov, P.A. Bagryansky, A.D. Beklemishev
→ Site
Concept description: Open traps are the simplest version of the magnetic confinement of thermonuclear plasma - permanent reactors. During their long history, they had several ups and downs, and the achievement of the Novosibirsk INP team inspires optimism about the possible sudden release of the NL as favorites. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: The GDML project combines both experimentally proven and still theoretical ideas that together allow us to put together one of the best (in terms of economics and available thermonuclear reactions) reactors among all possible. At the moment, the focus of the INP is on testing additional ideas, which, if implemented, make it possible to make a minimum GDML reactor with dimensions of about 30x3 meters. For now, it’s surprising that there is not a single startup in the world that would declare an open trap as a concept, apparently because it is too expensive for a startup to repeat the experience and experimental base of the INP.
Project: MagLIF
Technical level: 3.1
Key people: AB Sefkow, SA Slutz, JM Koning
→ Link to review
Concept description: Another representative of systems with compression of magnetized plasma targets. A small cylindrical target with DT gas is heated and ionized through the end by a high-power laser pulse. In an ionized plasma, an external coil induces a strong seed field (~ 10T), after which a longitudinal current of 25 megaamps is passed through the target. The magnetic field of the current compresses the target along the radius about 100 times, at the same time heating the fuel to thermonuclear parameters, after which ignition occurs. (more detailed description in Russian).
Expert position: MagLIF is one of the most beautiful thermonuclear concepts that emerged over the past 10 years (its roots, however, stretch back to 1982), and showed very good experimental results in 2014 (complete agreement with the theory was prevented by achieving unrecorded "Inside the plasma window to transmit the laser radiation). Apparently, physically, this concept can get to a high power output - if you create an installation that provides a pulse current of 70 megaamps, then the power output will be 1000 times higher than the power consumption.
However, as with any pulse systems, this one has two important difficulties that impede the implementation of power plants based on the concept. This is the need to collect complex high-tech targets about once a second, and introduce them into the working chamber, as well as the working chamber itself, in which somewhere one ton of TNT will explode every second. For these reasons, we hardly ever see a power plant with a pulsed thermonuclear reactor, but the physics here are interesting ...
Project: Wendelstein-7X
Technical level: 4.1
Key people: Dr. Thomas Klinger, Dr. C Nührenberg, RC Wolf, J. Kisslinger
→ Link to review
Concept description: Stellarators are one of the first concepts of closed magnetic traps, the same age and tokamak competitors. In tokamaks, a clever combination of external and internal induced magnetic fields is used to confine plasma in a circular orbit, which gives rise to a certain class of instabilities. In addition, tokamaks were originally pulsed machines, although later they learned how to maintain plasma current indefinitely. In an attempt to get rid of these problems, stellarators were invented - toroidal traps with a cleverly magnetised magnetic field.
Expert position: Stellarators were one of the concepts in which they very actively invested in the 1960s (along with open traps). However, a detailed study of the physics of stellarators led to the conclusion that they are not suitable for confining high-temperature plasma. In addition, the manufacture of monstrously complex magnets turned out to be technological insanity even for thermonuclear science. However, after sunset the concept was followed by a swan song in the form of a draft of Wendelstein 7-X. The calculation of the optimal magnetic field and the synthesis of magnets using a computer in the 80s allowed us to remove the problems described above. However, during this time, the tokamaks went far ahead and solved the main part of the problems that they were forced to do with the stellarator alternative. Stellarators, on the other hand, turn out to be too complex and non-technological to claim a place in a thermonuclear power station. So the W-7X is a terrific super high-tech tombstone of one of the concepts of fusion reactors.
In conclusion, I would like to note that all these startups are located in the USA, Canada and the UK. Although the most favorable market for the development of thermonuclear power plants is probably China, SEA, and continental Europe (replacement of coal-fired power plants). It can be concluded that for investors from other countries this direction seems too risky and “long”. And making such a conclusion we can go further - as soon as we see the first Taiwanese, South Korean, Japanese and Chinese startups on the near-thermonuclear theme, then we can say with great certainty that the time of thermonuclear energy has come.
Thank you for helping to create an article for Andrey Gavrilov.
I will try not only to list startups, but also to evaluate their “advancement” on this main road - from the idea of operating thermonuclear power stations built on the basis of this idea. In addition, I will give a brief description of the attitude of the expert community to a particular concept of a thermonuclear reactor. In order to assess technological maturity, I propose to put points from 1 to 7 in accordance with this label
Well let's start with something well known
1. Organization: ITER .
Technical level: 6.1.
Project start year: 1992
Key people: Dr. Bernard Bigot, Dr. Robert Aymar, Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, Dr. Gunter Janeschitz, Dr. Osamu Motojima, Dr. Won namkung.
→ Site
Description of the concept: The classic tokamak is a toroidal chamber for the magnetic confinement of thermonuclear plasma. On this concept, the maximum Q (the ratio of the heating power to the fusion power) has been achieved, far ahead of other ideas. ITER is the most advanced thermonuclear reactor, allowing to obtain stable burning thermonuclear plasma. However, the project is not actually a start-up aimed at practical benefits, which does not allow it to be compared with other participants in this list.
Expert position: Tokamaks have shown themselves to be the most successful idea of a fusion reactor, but it has fundamental limitations that practically do not allow working with another, besides DT thermonuclear reaction, and also today we can see great engineering difficulties in creating industrial power reactors based on this concept (density power at the diverter, breakdown, stability of the structure under neutron radiation, etc.).
2. Organization: Tri Alpha Energy
Technical level: 4.0
Project start year: 1998
Key people: Dr. Michl Binderbauer, Sergey Putvinsky, Norman Rostoker.
→ Site
Description of the concept: Beam driven FRC - confinement of a plasma vortex called the FRC using tangentially injected neutral beams. Neutral bundles also provide part of the synthesis. The concept is distinguished by very successful physics, which theoretically allows one to master not only the DT and DD reactions, but also pB11. In turn, pB11 means an almost complete (as compared to DT) absence of radioactive waste, a widespread cheap fuel, and engineering simplicity of a reactor. Another advantage is the lower power compared to tokamaks, at which the reactor “converges”. By minus can be attributed much less knowledge and possible pitfalls. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: The idea of Norman Rostoker from the mid-90s was tested by the TAE team in the 2000s and turned out to be working. In particular, the FRC hold time was raised from hundreds of microseconds to tens of milliseconds, scaling was found. Currently, TAE has recruited ~ 500 million investment, has a team that includes many “stars” of controlled thermonuclear fusion.
TAE scaling shows very serious progress and the possibility of achieving the stated goals.
3. Organization: Hellion Energy
Technical level: 2.5
Project start year: 2005
Key people: Dr. John Slough, Chris Pihl, Dr. George Votroubek
→ Site
Concept description: The idea of Norman Rostoker again - two FRC vortexes are accelerated by the magnetic system, collide, transferring kinetic energy to heat, and are compressed (by another) by the magnetic system to thermonuclear parameters. Pulsed reactor.
Expert position: It is believed that an energy reactor based on this concept is very difficult to construct both from the point of view of physics and from the point of view of engineering. However, the founders of Hellion Energy are full of optimism, and recently they have moved from working out the elements of a plasma machine to building a reactor that should test the scalability of the idea. One of the dark horses of the market. Humorous assessment of the complexity of this concept from the author of another concept in this list.
4. Organization: General Fusion
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 2002
Key people: Dr. Michel Laberge, Michael Delage
→ Site
Concept description: An idea that is somewhat similar to the previous one is the adiabatic compression of two encountered FRCs. However, here the compressive medium is a giant drop of liquid metal, in which a converging spherical wave is excited by steam hammers (!). ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: This concept has a long history of the development of “implosion by metal liners of magnetized plasma targets,” and its legs grow from the 1972 LINUS project. The idea is not bad on paper, but little studied experimentally. This is also evident from General Fusion - the startup has already been fairly well funded for about 10 years (collected more than 130 million dollars), and was supposed to reach the technical level of ~ 3 4 years ago according to plans. However, almost every element of the machine causes difficulties and the R & D chain, problems multiply, and the future becomes more vague. Currently, the achievement of the technical level 3 is planned in 2021.
5. Organization: Compact Fusion Reactor (Lockheed Martin)
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 2010
Key people: Dr. Tom McGuire, Mr. Charles Chase
→ Site
Concept description: Open trap with intraplasma dipoles. It allows, like all open traps, to achieve a high proportion of the use of magnetic field pressure (as opposed to tokamaks), which means that the reactions DD, DHe3 are available.
Expert position: In fact, this type of magnetic trap conceptually goes back to the 60s, and was thoroughly studied theoretically and experimentally. But it seems that the CFR team does not know the history, therefore it is filling many lumps on its own. Interestingly, the initial plans to create a reactor “which fits in the truck” have already been discarded, and the dimensions of the minimum reactor have grown to 7x22 meters. If you further extrapolate the experience with this concept to the CFR team, then soon they should find out that putting superconducting coils right inside the running thermonuclear reaction, to put it mildly, is not engineering, and this concept most likely will not be able to get out of the laboratory this time.
6. Organization: Tokamak Energy
Technical level: 3.2
Project start year: 2009
Key people: Jonathan Carling, David Kingham, Michael Graznevitch
→ Site
Description of the concept: The spherical tokamak is a geometric “rounded” ordinary tokamak, in which physics favors a simpler obtaining of a thermonuclear reaction. It is a fairly well-developed concept - there are 22 research spherical tokamaks in the world, at the largest of which the conditions Q ~ 0.1 are obtained ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: Spherical tokamak promises ignition under simpler conditions and smaller size, and at first glance it is much easier and cheaper to make an industrial reactor. However, compressed geometry means an engineering nightmare and more intense working conditions of the structure, in particular in the central column, which can mean simple and fast progress to technical level 5 and a complete impasse further.
7. Organization: Applied Fusion Systems
Technical level: 2.2
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Richard Dinan, Dr. James lambert
→ Site
Description of the concept: Also spherical tokamak.
Expert position: A recently-emerging startup with unclear prospects and not yet showing any hardware. One of the creators is the TV star.
8. Organization: EMCC
Technical level: 2.1
Project start year: 1987
Key people: Dr. Jaeyoung Park, Dr. Paul Sieck, Dr. Robert W. Bussard
→ Site
Description of the concept: Electrostatic confinement of the Polywell type - in the center of the chamber a cloud of electrons is created and held by a magnetic field, to which deuterium ions are attracted, accelerate and collide with each other with a thermonuclear reaction. Conceptually this is a virtual cathode fuzor.
Expert position: There are strong doubts that such a construction is efficient in the sense of a positive energy output, however, it is attractive to those who like ease of implementation, and “improving” polyvials usually resembles a scientific method. EMCC has been sucking money from the US Navy for similar activities for many decades, showing zero progress.
9. Organization: Convergent Scientific Inc
Technical level: 1.5
Project start year: 1987
Key people: Mr. Devlin Baker, Dr. Joel Rogers, Dr. Matt moynihan
→ Site
Description of the concept: Too polywell, like the previous startup.
Expert position: At the moment, this company seems to have died, although it has not been officially announced.
10. Organization: Fusion One
Technical level: 1.5
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Mr. Randal Volberg, Dr. Scott cornish
→ Site
Description of the concept: Too polywell, like the previous startup.
Expert position: A startup with the most dubious prospects - both in the chosen concept and in the competences of the founders. But there are pictures of “gigawatt polywell with the size of 5.5x5.5x5.5 meters” (that is, the density of the removed thermonuclear energy is proposed to be 16.1 MW / m ^ 2 - several times steeper than ITER).
11. Organization: Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Fusion
Technical level: 2.8
Project start year: 1998
Key people: Eric Lerner, Dr. Syed Hassan, Dr. Robert Terry
→ Site
Concept description: Plasma focus is one of the first thermonuclear reactor ideas. In an end coaxial electric discharge, instabilities cause a strong compression of the plasma pinch, leading to the achievement of thermonuclear conditions.
Expert position: Plasma focus has long been used as a technology for producing thermonuclear neutrons, incl. similar devices are used as pulsed neutron sources in nuclear bombs. The technical level of the “plasma focus” achieved in military research centers in the USA and Russia is immeasurably higher than LPPX shows. In particular, the total current of military installations is much higher. From this, we can conclude that the startup does not have any prospects for creating a fusion reactor, otherwise this approach would have been used by TCB specialists in the state salary.
12. Organization: First Light Fusion
Technical level: 1.1
Project start year: 2015
Key people: Paul Hoolligan.
→ Site
Description of the concept: Collapse of a spherical target with a thermonuclear fuel passing a high-speed shock wave in a liquid.
Expert position: At the moment, this is practically an unsubstantiated bare concept, however, it has received some money for experimental verification.
This is where classic startups developing their ideas for private investors' money and grants come to an end, but there are a few more projects that can be a start-up at any moment, and it’s worth mentioning them:
Project: CT Fusion (Dynomak)
Technical level: 2.0
Key people: Dr. Tom Jarboe, Dr. Aaron Hossack, Mr. Derek suterland
→ Site
Description of the concept: Magnetic trap, where the plasma holds itself with a complexly twisted frozen magnetic field. According to the creators, this concept can be brought to thermonuclear parameters. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: A university project that tried to become a tokamak, and painted rapid progress to a power station. The advantage of the concept is the lack of a large and heavy magnetic system, a minus, apparently, unclear prospects for scaling.
Project: Hyper-V + The PLX
Technical level: 2.0
Key people: Dr. Scott Hsu, Dr. Doug Witherspoon,
→ Site
Concept description: Another variant of compression of a magnetized target by a liner, in this case a plasma of heavy noble gases. In some ways similar to General Fusion. The spherical plasma DT target should be compressed by plasma beams arriving from all directions, which are generated by plasma guns.
Expert position: A moderately interesting concept that has been finding money for experiments in US nuclear laboratories for about 10 years. Of all the impulse concepts, it has the advantage of a completely gas target and drivers, which allows it does not care about making a new target and harvesting old fragments 10 times a second. On the other hand, from the point of view of compression parameters, this experiment has not shown much progress for 5-7 years, but it shows progress in complicating the planned reactor — the path that most often leads to the cemetery of thermonuclear concepts.
Project: MIT ARC
Technical level: 2.5
Key people: BNSorbom, J.Ball, TRPalmer, FJMangiarotti
→ Site
Concept description: Another option tokamak: with a strong field. By increasing the magnetic field by 2 times (which is very difficult engineering) you can get a gain in power in the same volume of plasma by 16 times. Conceptually, problems with the first wall and the divertor are exacerbated here, but the gain is noticeable by eye. Unfortunately, there were few tokamaks with a strong field in the world, and this direction still requires its intermediate installations. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: ARC from the plasma laboratory of the famous university MIT is a fusion of bright ideas - high-field tokamak with collapsible high-temperature superconducting magnets, liquid-salt blanket, reduction of current maintenance systems, etc. Unfortunately, all this splendor makes it possible to draw a very cool car that easily lays ITER on the shoulder blades, but in reality it may take decades of research and development and finding problems that lead tokamaks with a strong field to a dead end in exactly the same way as traditional ones. For example, not so long ago, it was discovered that a conductive fluid that is pumped across a strong magnetic field can form reverse flow currents — such finds make it necessary to completely revise the idea of creating simple liquid-salt blankets.
Project: NumerEx
Technical level: 1.5
Key people: Dr. Scott Hsu, Dr. Doug Witherspoon
→ Site
Concept description: Another representative of concepts with compression of magnetized plasma, in fact, resuscitation of the 1972 LINUS idea. In a rapidly rotating cylindrical cavity, liquid metal is poured (molten NaK or Li), which is scattered by centrifugal force along the walls and there is an empty channel in the center. A magnetized plasma target is injected into the channel, and with the help of gas pistons, the metal is displaced closer to the center, collapsing the channel and compressing the plasma target.
Expert position: The concept of LINUS and its development in NumerEx from the point of view of physics is quite good. However, even basic experimental installations require complex engineering — a record of several parameters of gas valves, large rotating machines, integration of all this with high vacuum and delicate plasma injectors. The path to scaling concepts for scaling is not cheap and not fast. From this point of view, the creative rethinking and engineering optimization carried out by General Fusion looks like a very correct job, which is very difficult to outdo.
Project: GDML
Technical level: 3.5
Key people: A.A. Ivanov, P.A. Bagryansky, A.D. Beklemishev
→ Site
Concept description: Open traps are the simplest version of the magnetic confinement of thermonuclear plasma - permanent reactors. During their long history, they had several ups and downs, and the achievement of the Novosibirsk INP team inspires optimism about the possible sudden release of the NL as favorites. ( my article on the project ).
Expert position: The GDML project combines both experimentally proven and still theoretical ideas that together allow us to put together one of the best (in terms of economics and available thermonuclear reactions) reactors among all possible. At the moment, the focus of the INP is on testing additional ideas, which, if implemented, make it possible to make a minimum GDML reactor with dimensions of about 30x3 meters. For now, it’s surprising that there is not a single startup in the world that would declare an open trap as a concept, apparently because it is too expensive for a startup to repeat the experience and experimental base of the INP.
Project: MagLIF
Technical level: 3.1
Key people: AB Sefkow, SA Slutz, JM Koning
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Concept description: Another representative of systems with compression of magnetized plasma targets. A small cylindrical target with DT gas is heated and ionized through the end by a high-power laser pulse. In an ionized plasma, an external coil induces a strong seed field (~ 10T), after which a longitudinal current of 25 megaamps is passed through the target. The magnetic field of the current compresses the target along the radius about 100 times, at the same time heating the fuel to thermonuclear parameters, after which ignition occurs. (more detailed description in Russian).
Expert position: MagLIF is one of the most beautiful thermonuclear concepts that emerged over the past 10 years (its roots, however, stretch back to 1982), and showed very good experimental results in 2014 (complete agreement with the theory was prevented by achieving unrecorded "Inside the plasma window to transmit the laser radiation). Apparently, physically, this concept can get to a high power output - if you create an installation that provides a pulse current of 70 megaamps, then the power output will be 1000 times higher than the power consumption.
However, as with any pulse systems, this one has two important difficulties that impede the implementation of power plants based on the concept. This is the need to collect complex high-tech targets about once a second, and introduce them into the working chamber, as well as the working chamber itself, in which somewhere one ton of TNT will explode every second. For these reasons, we hardly ever see a power plant with a pulsed thermonuclear reactor, but the physics here are interesting ...
Project: Wendelstein-7X
Technical level: 4.1
Key people: Dr. Thomas Klinger, Dr. C Nührenberg, RC Wolf, J. Kisslinger
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Concept description: Stellarators are one of the first concepts of closed magnetic traps, the same age and tokamak competitors. In tokamaks, a clever combination of external and internal induced magnetic fields is used to confine plasma in a circular orbit, which gives rise to a certain class of instabilities. In addition, tokamaks were originally pulsed machines, although later they learned how to maintain plasma current indefinitely. In an attempt to get rid of these problems, stellarators were invented - toroidal traps with a cleverly magnetised magnetic field.
Expert position: Stellarators were one of the concepts in which they very actively invested in the 1960s (along with open traps). However, a detailed study of the physics of stellarators led to the conclusion that they are not suitable for confining high-temperature plasma. In addition, the manufacture of monstrously complex magnets turned out to be technological insanity even for thermonuclear science. However, after sunset the concept was followed by a swan song in the form of a draft of Wendelstein 7-X. The calculation of the optimal magnetic field and the synthesis of magnets using a computer in the 80s allowed us to remove the problems described above. However, during this time, the tokamaks went far ahead and solved the main part of the problems that they were forced to do with the stellarator alternative. Stellarators, on the other hand, turn out to be too complex and non-technological to claim a place in a thermonuclear power station. So the W-7X is a terrific super high-tech tombstone of one of the concepts of fusion reactors.
In conclusion, I would like to note that all these startups are located in the USA, Canada and the UK. Although the most favorable market for the development of thermonuclear power plants is probably China, SEA, and continental Europe (replacement of coal-fired power plants). It can be concluded that for investors from other countries this direction seems too risky and “long”. And making such a conclusion we can go further - as soon as we see the first Taiwanese, South Korean, Japanese and Chinese startups on the near-thermonuclear theme, then we can say with great certainty that the time of thermonuclear energy has come.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/409813/