The 20ha campus at the company’s corporate headquarters includes an advanced manufacturing facility as well as its SPARC fusion energy demonstration currently under construction – dubbed “the world’s first commercially viable net energy fusion machine”.

The campus also is planned to enable the ongoing scaling of fusion power and expansion of the company, a start-up spun out from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center to combine the decades of fusion research with the innovation and speed of the private sector.

“The opening of this campus marks an important moment as we continue to accelerate towards commercially, globally deployable fusion energy,” says CEO Bob Mumgaard.

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“This site brings together our team, the proven and next stage technologies, the advanced manufacturing capabilities and the demonstration of actual fusion performance at the scale required to bring fusion energy off the lab bench and to the market.”

Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ approach to fusion is magnetic confinement, with the SPARC facility a compact tokamak device.

This is similar to that of for example UK-based Tokamak Energy, with the ‘race’ on to see which team and/or country will be the first to deliver.

Its ‘secret sauce’ is the use of high temperature superconducting magnets, which the company previously has demonstrated up to 20T and should enable the delivery of similar performance to for example ITER but in a more compact system.

Predictions are that SPARC, due to become operational in 2025, could produce over 100MW of fusion power at gains of Q>10, with Q>1, i.e. an energy production greater than the input, breached soon after its start.

SPARC in turn should pave the way for a commercial fusion plant ARC, which is expected to start feeding energy into the grid as soon as the early 2030s.

Since its launch in 2018 Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised over $2 billion in funding and received 18 INFUSE nuclear fusion development awards from the US Department of Energy.

The latest of these in January were for production methods for steel materials for fusion and for a methodology for neutronics modelling and systems design.

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“Unnecessary, self-imposed complexity,” was how Bret Kugelmass of Last Energy described the key reason for the downfall of nuclear power.

Kugelmass, in a presentation at Enlit Europe in Frankfurt, hailed uranium as the most energy-dense fuel source by far, responsible for one of the fastest scale-ups of decarbonised electricity ever.

“However, nuclear power is fundamentally flawed,” he said.

And if we are to take our energy security and decarbonisation goals seriously, we must urgently overcome these flaws and tackle the barriers to commercial nuclear power.

Nuclear power – the fundamental flaw

We have come a long way since German chemist Martin Klaproth discovered Uranium in 1789.

Kugelmass pointed out that it has been over 60 years since we began generating electricity from the splitting of the atom. Since then, the nuclear sector enjoyed a time of prosperity.

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Large-scale development of nuclear in the 1960s saw the sector flourish. Plants were built quickly and efficiently, plants that even decades later run consistently.

“So what caused the industry to stagnate, what caused such as essential source to flounder after decades of success,” asked Kugelmass.

He explained that the underlying technology is simple, the electricity is clean and reliable, however, the flaw lies with the delivery model. How nuclear power is financed and how it is physically built is fundamentally broken.

Fix the flaw but keep it simple

Over the last 15 years, explained Kugelmass, nuclear reactors have been built smaller and more modular, causing a buzz around SMR technology in particular.

“SMRs are neither small nor modular and do not address the cost and complexity that led to nuclear stagnation”.

“We treat nuclear as if it needs to be complex and that in order to move forward it needs innovation around the fuel, chemistry, metallurgy or reactors.”

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But is the industry trading the boring problems for the fun, overly technical ones? Kugelmass believes this is the case and that we won’t move the needle on underlying economics by concentrating on innovation that will yield applications only decades from now.

Kugelmass cited the exciting advances made with molten salt and fusion, emphasising that although these are promising, they blatantly ignore the challenges to the nuclear industry today.

Nuclear plants as a product and not a project

In order for nuclear to benefit us with baseload power, it must be implementable, and scalable, now, said Kugelmass.

He suggested that in order to break through the barriers to commercialisation, nuclear plants must be treated as a product and not a project.

He suggests that in order to scale nuclear, we need to build dozens of plants at the same time.

The build requires a simple design that can be easily manufactured. Also, maximising standardisation, leveraging current technology and established supply chains, while minimising specialised labour will be critical.

“It needs to be affordable and financeable,” said Kugelmass, leveraging private funding with minimal government involvement.

Kugelmass recommends producing nuclear power plants in the same way the automotive industry produces cars, a sequence of ongoing builds that roll off the assembly line, with the only waiting period being for installation.

Mass production allows the planning and permitting to begin with product development, reducing the time required to deliver the product.

Nuclear’s decentralised power

Last Energy’s focus on building micro modular nuclear power plants has received a lot of interest, with the company securing deals for 24 power plants across three European markets within the last six months.

Poland, UK and Romania are the hotspots as industrial partners and grid-scale utilities seek distributed, on-site baseload nuclear power, stated Kugelmass.

“We have seen a shift to renewed interest in nuclear as our energy systems struggle to meet energy security and decarbonisation goals.

“There is no question that this trend will continue – the question is how will society rise to meet such demand?”

Kugelmass stressed that there is no need to wait for research and development or the sometimes elusive political will to mobilise billions in government funds.

The core technology is available now, it has been for decades. However, the mindset needs to change in order to realise nuclear’s power and potential.

“Nuclear power is the easiest pathway to decarbonise entire countries in under a decade and guarantee energy security for generations to come.”

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A new fusion energy advanced prototype with power plant-relevant magnet technology will be built in the UK by Tokamak Energy.

Tokamak’s compact spherical device, called ST80-HTS, will include a complete set of high temperature superconducting magnets to confine and control hydrogen fuel, which becomes plasma many times hotter than the sun. 

The new purpose-built facility will be located at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham Campus, near Oxford in England.  

It comes just days after startup First Light Fusion also signed a deal to build a demonstration device at the Culham campus, and also in the wake of the UK government announcing the formation of a new body to deliver the country’s fusion programme.

In October last year Tokamak Energy and the UKAEA signed a framework agreement to enable closer collaboration to develop spherical tokamaks as a route to commercial fusion energy.  

Designs for the facility are underway in partnership with construction consultants McBains, with building scheduled for completion in 2026. 

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Tokamak Energy chief executive Chris Kelsall said the go-ahead for the prototype was “a major step forward on our mission to demonstrate grid-ready fusion energy by the early 2030s”.

He said the ST80-HTS device “aims to validate key engineering solutions needed to make commercial fusion a reality and will showcase our world-class magnet technology at scale”.

He added that “public and private partnerships of this nature will be a crucial catalyst for fusion to deliver global energy security and mitigate climate change”. 

The ST80-HTS will target the significantly longer pulse durations needed for sustained high power output in commercially competitive fusion power plants.

Tokamak Energy’s current ST40 fusion device in nearby Milton Park in Oxfordshire has recently been upgraded to enable experiments relating to future features that will be incorporated in both ST80-HTS and ST-E1.

Last year it achieved a 100 million degrees Celsius fusion plasma – the highest temperature ever recorded in a compact spherical tokamak. 

Exclusive interview: What are the nuclear technologies of the future? Watch now.

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Under the agreement the two parties will develop the new building at Culham, for which architects and technical designers already have been appointed and which will house First Light Fusion’s next generation Machine 4.

Construction is expected to begin in 2024 with operations likely to commence in 2027.

First Light Fusion is pursuing an ‘inertial confinement’ approach to fusion, similar to that at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which in December demonstrated a net energy gain.

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However, instead of a large laser to trigger the fusion, the company’s approach involves the firing of a projectile at the fuel pellet, considering this to be simpler and more energy efficient and with lower physics risk.

Dr Nick Hawker, co-founder and CEO of First Light Fusion, says that with the agreement in place and contracts signed with designers and architects, the development timeframe can be accelerated.

“The recent gain result from the National Ignition Facility in California proved what we always knew – that inertial confinement fusion works and offers the potential for a faster route to commercial fusion. We’ve already proven fusion. Gain is our next milestone.”

First Light Fusion’s Machine 4 is aimed to have a stored electrical energy of around 100MJ with the capability of launching projectiles at 60km/s.

This speed on impact inside the target will accelerate to approximately 200km/s per second as a result of First Light Fusion’s amplifier technology, which focuses the energy of the projectile into the fusion fuel, both boosting the pressure from impact to deliver to the fuel and shaping the waves to produce spherical implosions.

The current Machine 3 launches a projectile at approximately 20km/s.

Machine 4 is aimed to deliver a net energy gain, exemplified by a fuel gain of 100 or more.

The First Light Fusion agreement follows closely behind the granting of permission for the development of a demonstration of Canada-based General Fusion’s magnetised target fusion technology at the UKAEA Culham campus.

The company expects that its location should bring significant advantages that will expedite its development, including UKAEA’s existing expertise and supply chain infrastructure.

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Alongside the formation of the new body, the government announced that a prototype plant would be delivered at a former coalfield site at West Burton in the north of England.

The so-called Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) plant would be constructed by 2040 as a demonstration of the ability for fusion energy to generate electricity for the grid.

The approach for the STEP is magnetic confinement fusion, which requires strong magnetic fields to confine the plasma and with spherical tokamaks found to offer performance advantages over the early doughnut shaped tokamaks.

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“Fusion energy now has the potential to transform our world for the better by harnessing the same process powering the sun to provide cheap, abundant, low-carbon energy across the world,” said science and innovation minister George Freeman, announcing the new body.

“We are moving to turn fusion from cutting edge science into a billion-pound clean energy industry to create thousands of jobs across the UK, grow exports and drive regeneration of this former coalfield site through a fusion innovation cluster in Nottinghamshire.”

While for the first time fusion has been demonstrated to deliver a net energy gain and the jury is out on which of the numerous initiatives under way, both public and private, will be first to the market, there are still significant technical hurdles remaining.

The STEP programme is set up to address these hurdles and the government anticipates paving the way to the commercialisation of fusion and the potential development of a fleet of future plants around the world.

For example, Oxford based Tokamak Energy, among the UK’s leaders in the spherical tokamak approach, is embarking on test programmes of materials for the tritium breeder blanket and of new high temperature superconducting magnets to ensure that they can meet the extreme conditions under which fusion occurs.

“The learnings will be a key catalyst for delivering the global deployment of compact, low-cost spherical tokamak power plants,” promises Tokamak Energy CEO Chris Kelsall of its new Demo4 facility.

The UK was an early leader in fusion research with the Joint European Torus programme at Culham now entering its 40th year of operation.

The UKAEA states that the STEP prototype will have many of the features of a fully operational power station, including infrastructure and associated research and development facilities, and that it is likely to be a delivery project of comparable scale and value to a major operational power station.

As part of the project, a STEP skills centre will be developed at West Burton for local workforce skills development.

The formation of the new Industrial Fusion Solutions body will take place over the next 18 months.

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The magnets are used to create the strong magnetic fields needed to confine and control the plasma which is several times hotter than the Sun.

In order to test the new HTS magnets Tokamak Energy will utilise the 44 newly built individual magnetic coils at the Demo4 facility.

Demo4 will comprise 14 toroidal field (TF) limbs and a pair of poloidal field coil stacks to form a cage-shaped structure.

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Strong magnetic fields are generated by passing large electrical currents through arrays of electromagnet coils that will surround the plasma in future power plants.

The magnets are wound with HTS tapes, which are multi-layered conductors made mostly of strong and conductive metals, but with an internal coating of ‘rare earth barium copper oxide’ (REBCO) superconducting material.

According to Tokamak Energy, Demo4 will have a magnetic field strength of over 18 Tesla, nearly a million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.

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Dr Rod Bateman, HTS magnet development manager at Tokamak Energy, added: “Demo4 will allow us to create substantial magnetic forces and test them in fusion power plant-relevant scenarios. Importantly, it will substantially progress the technology readiness level of HTS magnets as a key part of our mission to demonstrate grid-ready fusion in the early 2030s.”

Full assembly at Tokamak Energy’s headquarters in Milton Park, near Oxford, will complete this year and testing will extend into 2024, informing designs and operational scenarios for its advanced prototype, ST80-HTS, and subsequent fusion power plant, ST-E1.

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The joint venture aims to bring commercially viable, fourth-generation nuclear fuel to market for USNC’s Micro-Modular reactor (MMR), as well as for other advanced reactor designs.

Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) fuel production capacity will be used in the manufacture of Ultra Safe Nuclear’s FCM fuel and also will be made available to the broader commercial market.

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Manufacturing of the TRISO particles and FCM fuel is expected to begin in late 2025.

Ultra Safe Nuclear’s collaboration with Framatome follows the opening of USNC’s Pilot Fuel Manufacturing (PFM) facility in August 2022, claimed to be the only privately funded facility in the US to manufacture TRISO particles.

According to USNC, the facility’s engineers employ additive manufacturing to fabricate FCM fuel.

The modular production lines for TRISO particles and FCM fuel, already demonstrated at scale at the PFM facility, are rapidly repeated to increase capacity to meet the growing demand for the MMR and advanced nuclear reactor technologies more broadly.

TRISO fuel

USNC describes a TRISO particle as a Uranium bearing sphere coated with special ceramic layers designed like tiny pressure vessels.

The layers contain fission products inside and ensure mechanical and chemical stability during irradiation and temperature changes. The fuel is extremely robust, with over 60s years of development and experience.

In the case of Fully Ceramic Microencapsulated Fuel, industry standard TRISO fuel, which contains the radioactive byproducts of fission within layered ceramic coatings, is encased within a fully dense silicon carbide matrix.

This combination provides an extremely rugged and stable fuel with extraordinary high temperature stability.

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The tumultuous events impacting the energy sector over the past year have highlighted the benefits of nuclear technology, according to Crawforth. This has accelerated the development of progressive nuclear technologies, in turn, causing a new wave of nuclear deployment across Europe.

And this new wave is largely dominated by small modular reactors or SMRs.

Unlike large nuclear which is often plagued by cost overruns and delays, SMRs can deliver the energy transition affordably and reliably.

It’s one part of the global renaissance of different nuclear technologies, such as fusion and advanced modular reactors, on the generation horizon.

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The milestone step will allow the Oregon-based company’s power module to become the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh nuclear reactor design cleared for use in the US.

The rule takes effect on 21 February 2023 and allows utilities to specifically reference NuScale’s SMR design when applying for a combined license to build and operate a reactor. Site-specific licensing procedures must still be completed and licensing obtained before construction can begin.

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NuScale’s SMR is a pressurized water reactor with each power module capable of generating 50MW of electricity. The company says each power module leverages natural processes, such as convection and gravity, to passively cool the reactor without additional water, power, or even operator action.

NuScale’s 12-module VOYGR-12 power plant can generate 924MW. Its four-module VOYGR-4 can generate 308MW.

VOYGR is the official name of NuScale’s SMR, which it plans to deploy for Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ (UAMPS) Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) at the Idaho National Lab (INL).

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NuScale recently submitted a second standard design approval application to the NRC for its updated SMR design, which is based on the VOYGR-6, a six-module configuration powered by an uprated 250MWt (77MWe) module.

In November 2020, NuScale concluded its technology could generate 25% more power per module, at 77MWe each. As a result, the company decided to seek approval for the VOYGR-6 design instead of the 12-module configuration that was in the design approved by the NRC that year.

NuScale Chief Technology Officer Dr. José Reyes will be presenting as part of the POWERGEN International Keynote on Tuesday, Feb. 21. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from NuScale in one of the company’s first public appearances following the NRC decision.

The CFPP project’s first module is projected to come online in 2029, with all six modules online by 2030. NuScale believes the six-module CFPP will act as a catalyst for subsequent SMR plant deployments across the US and beyond.

The NRC accepted NuScale’s SMR design certification application back in March 2018 and issued its final technical review in August 2020. The NRC Commission later voted to certify the design on 29 July 2022—making it the first SMR approved by the NRC for use in the United States.

“SMRs are no longer an abstract concept,” said assistant secretary for nuclear energy Dr. Kathryn Huff. “They are real and they are ready for deployment thanks to the hard work of NuScale, the university community, our national labs, industry partners, and the NRC. This is innovation at its finest and we are just getting started here in the U.S.!”

Originally published by Kevin Clark on power-eng.com

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In December, DOE announced that a team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had achieved fusion ignition, a breakthrough that captured headlines. Ignition, in which more energy was derived from fusion than was put into it, had not previously been accomplished in a laboratory setting and raised hopes that fusion energy could play a major role in the transition to clean energy.

The funding awards come through the Office of Science’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) programme, which was set up in 2019 to accelerate fusion energy development through public-private research partnerships.

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The projects will be led by researchers at seven private companies:

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
• Energy Driven Technologies LLC (Champaign, Illinois)
• Focused Energy (Austin, Texas)
• General Atomics (San Diego, California)
• Princeton Stellarators Inc. (Princeton, New Jersey)
• Tokamak Energy Inc. (Bruceton Mills, West Virginia)
• Type One Energy Group (Madison, Wisconsin) 

The awards are intended to provide companies with access to national laboratories’ expertise to address scientific and technological challenges in pursuing fusion energy systems.

INFUSE solicited proposals from the fusion industry and selected projects for one- or two-year awards between $50,000 and $500,000 each, with a 20% cost share for industry partners. Future funding depends on congressional appropriations.

In the Lawrence Livermore breakthrough, an extremely brief fusion reaction, which used 192 lasers and temperatures measured at multiple times hotter than the center of the sun, was achieved on 5 December 2022.

The experiments were conducted at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), a facility large enough to accommodate three football fields. NIF is regarded as one of the world’s most precise and reproducible laser systems. It guides, amplifies, reflects, and focuses its array of laser beams into a target about the size of a pencil eraser in a few billionths of a second, in the process delivering more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy and 500 trillion watts of peak power.

With temperatures in the target exceeding 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and with pressures of more than 100 billion Earth atmospheres, hydrogen atoms in the target fuse and release energy in a controlled thermonuclear reaction.

NIF is a part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Stockpile Stewardship Program which is charged with maintaining the reliability, security, and safety of the US nuclear weapon deterrent without full-scale testing. The High Energy Density science programme studies material behavior under extreme pressure, enabling researchers to conduct weapon physics experiments in a controlled laboratory environment once possible only with underground testing.

Originally published on power-eng.com

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