Burnaby’s General Fusion lands $49m investment from feds

BIV By Tyler Orton | October 26, 2018 Plasma injector heats matter to 5 million degrees Celsius. | General Fusion A Burnaby-based clean-energy pioneer is banking on a sizeable government investment to create hundreds of new jobs. The federal government announced October 26 it’s investing $49.3 million in General Fusion. Dollars from the Strategic Innovation … Read more

Ignition Pending

Physics World 16 Oct 2018 Reproducing the energy of stars here on Earth could revolutionize how we fuel our lives. But why does fusion energy always seem to be 30 years away? Melanie Windridge investigates Scientists have been trying to harness nuclear fusion – the energy of the stars – since the 1930s. The reaction, … Read more

How far away are we from commercial fusion energy?

The Economic Times (India) Oct 18, 2018 After achieving the milestone mark of 50 per cent to first plasma in November 2017, ITER project implementation progresses by 0.7 per cent per month. Electricity-generating fusion power plants -one of the biggest inventions in history — might be safe, efficient, reliable and environmentally responsible. But, how far … Read more

Booming business in Culham means expansion for Science Centre

gov.uk 11 October 2018 Culham Science Centre, home to 1,500 highly skilled scientists and innovators, has been granted permission to expand by Science Minister Sam Gyimah. Culham Science Centre, home to 1,500 highly skilled scientists and innovators, has today (11 October) been granted permission to expand by Science Minister Sam Gyimah the expansion is needed … Read more

Cavity ring-down spectroscopy to measure negative ion density in a helicon plasma source for fusion neutral beams

AIP Published Online: 12 October 2018 Accepted: September 2018 Review of Scientific Instruments 89, 103504 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5044504 R. Agnello, M. Barbisan, I. Furno, Ph. Guittienne, A. A. Howling, R. Jacquier, R. Pasqualotto, G. Plyushchev, Y. Andrebe, S. Béchu, I. Morgal, and A. Simonin Abstract Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) is used to measure the D− … Read more

Helion Energy got funding for possible breakeven fusion device this year

Next Big Future brian wang | October 1, 2018 Helion Energy has successfully raised $30 million raised in the past three years will be enough to get Helion through the debut of its 50-megwatt break-even nuclear fusion prototype. Helion’s commercial strategy is to build fusion reactors in Washington, with capacity of about 50 megawatts, and … Read more

A new path to solving a longstanding fusion challenge

MIT David L. Chandler | MIT News Office | October 9, 2018 Novel design could help shed excess heat in next-generation fusion power plants. The ARC conceptual design for a compact, high magnetic field fusion power plant. The design now incorporates innovations from the newly published research to handle heat exhaust from the plasma. ARC … Read more

Winners of the IAEA Crowdsourcing Challenge for Materials for Fusion Technology Announced

IAEA Oct. 3, 2018 Aldo Malavasi, Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, hands over the IAEA Challenge on Materials for Fusion Award to Udo von Toussaint, Group Leader of the Plasma-Material Modeling and Foundations group at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics. (Photo: IAEA) A team of … Read more

Tokamak Energy

Institution of Mechanical Engineers As part of our Innovation campaign, we spoke to Tokamak Energy’s Dr Melanie Windridge about the company’s vision, the role of engineers in society, and what innovation means to her. Tokamak Energy is one of the companies supported by our Stephenson Fund. What does Tokamak Energy do? Tokamak Energy is working … Read more

Attempting to tame plasmas in fusion

Phys.org October 2, 2018, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Computer simulations show that the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability (left) can be suppressed with a saddle-shaped magnetic field (right). Credit: Matter and Radiation at Extremes Nuclear fusion, the release of energy when light atomic nuclei merge, is touted as a carbon-free solution to global energy requirements. … Read more