The UK Atomic Energy Authority (‘UKAEA’) and First Light Fusion (‘First Light’) have today signed an agreement for the design and construction of a new purpose-built facility to house First Light’s Machine 4 at UKAEA’s Culham Campus in Oxfordshire. First Light is pursuing an “inertial confinement” approach to fusion. First Light’s method leverages the same …
NASA has funded a phase 1 NIAC (NASA Innovation Advanced Concepts) study to get through about 24 miles (40 kilometers) of ice on Europa and other moons with liquid oceans. Jupiter’s satellite Europa almost certainly hides a global saltwater ocean beneath its icy surface. Chemistry at the ice surface and ocean-rock interface might provide the …
Helion Fusion CEO, David Kirtley, presented an update on the work as of December, 2022. They are working on their seventh-generation prototype system and they have had over 10,000 shots with the sixth-generation system. They create and form plasmas and accelerate two plasmas to merge at supersonic speeds. They do not inject beams and operate …
General Fusion of Canada is developing magnetized target fusion and is one of the top five fusion energy startups in terms of overall funding. They have raised about $322 million from Jeff Bezos, the Canadian and Malaysian governments. I track over 30 nuclear fusion projects and think this one, Helion Energy and HB11 Energy are …
This animation shows a close up of the projectile/target interaction inside the reaction vessel for First Light Fusion. They electromagnetically launch a projectile to create inertial fusion. They do not use a laser. the target implodes faster than the projectile. They were getting velocity multipliers by 10X back in 2019. They think the onward path …
LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power …
The Bussard Ramjet drive has been proven not to work, but laying out a runway of fuel could work. This has been examined in more detail. Fuel is deliberately emplaced in the path of the spacecraft before the flight. Kare proposed that, at the velocities proposed for interstellar flight, nuclear fusion can be accomplished at …
There are three main types of nuclear fusion and PB11 (hydrogen-boron) is the most desired. PB11 nuclear fusion would have almost no neutron radiation but it takes 1 billion degree temperatures instead of 100 million for deuterium tritium or about 500 million for deuteriurm-deuterium. The PALS laser facility in Prague has reported a major advance …
I have a farely comprehensive understanding of the huge challenges needed to create commercial nuclear fusion power. This is why I am more optimistic about molten salt nuclear fission. I try to explain this in two videos. However, this is a complex topic. I will try to state this as clearly and briefly as possible …
Can we get nuclear reactors that are walkaway safe with no physical possibility of meltdown? Can we have energy that is a hundred times safer than solar and a million times safer than coal? Can we solve CO2 emissions and air pollution? Can we get energy that is much cheaper and more abundant for a …
