Pacific Fusion’s next fusion machine could clear a key hurdle to commercial power
Pacific Fusion is one step closer to commercializing fusion power after breaking ground Tuesday on a facility in New Mexico designed to generate as much energy as it consumes. “It’s a huge step forward for commercial fusion power,” Carrie von Muench, co-founder and chief operating officer at Pacific Fusion, told TechCrunch.
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Key Facts
- Fact 1: Pacific Fusion aims to hit net facility gain by 2030, with an eye toward operating a commercial power plant in the mid-2030s.
- Fact 2: The pulses of electricity will be generated by 156 pulser modules, each of which contains 32 circular stages made up of 10 bricks.
- Fact 3: Earlier this year, Pacific Fusion tested a one-third-scale version of a pulser module, which released 440 gigawatts of peak power in 80 nanoseconds.
- Fact 4: Each pulse of the new demonstration system will generate on the order of 100 megajoules, about 10 times the output of the National Ignition Facility, LeChien said.
Pacific Fusion is one step closer to commercializing fusion power after breaking ground Tuesday on a facility in New Mexico designed to generate as much energy as it consumes. “It’s a huge step forward for commercial fusion power,” Carrie von Muench, co-founder and chief operating officer at Pacific Fusion, told TechCrunch.
“To our knowledge, there’s no such facility being constructed in the country.” While fusion power startups have been making rapid progress, no experiment or device has been able to generate enough power to offset the energy used by the facility, a milestone the industry calls net facility gain. One device, at the National Ignition Facility, has shown that controlled fusion reactions can generate more energy than they consume, but it is still far short of what would be needed to power the facility. Pacific Fusion aims to hit net facility gain by 2030, with an eye toward operating a commercial power plant in the mid-2030s.
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Original source: TechCrunch
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