Grant Administrator

Fusion Fuel EfficiencyNuclear Fusion is potentially the ultimate green energy source, producing no dangerous byproducts, radioactivity (the only “waste” is helium), or greenhouse gases. And it could be powered by a fuel so abundant that it is a significant percentage of the entire Universe: deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.But this is also a very difficult to achieve form of energy generation. It requires replicating on Earth the conditions in the core of the Sun, with tremendous pressures and tens or hundreds of millions of degrees.Nuclear fusion has been achieved in physics laboratories for decades, but a net energy-positive fusion reaction is still to be reached. This is what many are racing to accomplish, from the international megaproject ITER to commercial fusion projects like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Proxima Fusion.Commercial viability will depend not only on achieving stable and energy-positive plasma generation, but also on the general efficiency of the process.One open question is the fuel efficiency. Deuterium is known to be partially absorbed by the walls of the tokamak fusion reactors. Researchers at Princeton University, University of California, University of Tennessee, Sandia National Laboratory, and General Atomics are figuring it out.They published their results in Nuclear Materials and Energy1, under the title “Deuterium retention behaviors of boronization films at DIII-D divertor surface”.Deuterium, Tritium FusionThe lighter an atom is, the more potential energy is released when it undergoes nuclear fusion

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, December 2024 - John Kruep has been appointed as Senior Director, People Operations at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS).

Fusion, The Ultimate Energy SourceAs stable, reliable, cheap, and carbon-neutral energy supplies become an increasingly pressing issue, all eyes have been on nuclear solutions.This includes nuclear fission, or the splitting of heavy atoms like uranium, thorium, or plutonium. This technology is making a dramatic comeback on the back of the phasing out of coal and gas power plants, despite the need for baseload power generation, as well as the trends of electrification of transportation, heating, and industrial production.It is, however, not without problems, even for the more advanced 4th generation of nuclear power plants. Most notably, it still involves the handling of highly radioactive materials, something the public is still wary of and never going to be fully environmentally neutral.This is why scientists have been looking at the promises of nuclear fusion, which merge together atoms like hydrogen, the same phenomenon powering the Sun.This would use a fuel that is the most abundant element in the Universe and produce only harmless helium or lithium. It would also be powerful enough to make available essentially infinite energy, with zero risk of explosion or runaway chain reaction.The problem is that producing the required conditions is so hard to achieve that no fusion reactor has ever come close to commercialization so far.This might change in less than a decade, at least according to Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The company has just announced that it is moving toward building the first commercial fusion reactor in Virginia .CFS Reactor ProjectCommonwealth Fusion Systems is aiming for its ARC reactor to generate 400 MW for the Virginian power grid, which is enough to power 150,000 homes.This is a radical advancement for the field of nuclear fusion, as it always seemed that the first scale-up reactor was 20-30 years away. Even the massive international endeavor that is ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is not expected to be finished before 2039.In comparison, the CFS reactor is planned to be built on a site owned by the energy company Dominion (D +0.2%)