Inertia moves to market one of the world’s most elaborate scientific experiments

Fusion energy startup Inertia Enterprises said Tuesday it has signed three agreements with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to help bring the California lab’s pioneering laser-based fusion reactor to market.

Trades can give Inertia A push on competing startups. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at LLNL is up to date Experience only To prove that controlled fusion reactions can produce more energy than needed for ignition. Inertia He exploded at the scene In February with a Series A of $450 million, making it one of Best capitalized startups In industry.

Inertia and LLNL operate on a type of fusion called Inertial confinementwhich generates fusion conditions by compressing the fuel pellet using some external force, unlike other methods that use strong magnetic fields to confine the plasma until the atoms fuse.

At NIF, 192 laser beams are fired into a large vacuum chamber so that they converge on a small gold cylinder called a hohlraum, which contains diamond-covered fuel pellets. When laser beams hit the holoraum, it vaporizes and emits X-rays that explode the BB-sized fuel pellet inside. The diamond coating is converted into plasma, which expands to compress the deuterium and tritium fuel.

If that doesn’t sound weird enough, keep in mind that all of this would have to happen multiple times per second if the technology is going to produce power for the grid.

The laser-powered reactor design was first theorized in the 1960s as a safer means of research into thermonuclear weapons, although scientists also recognized the potential for energy production. Construction of the NIF began in 1997, and it took 25 years to reach the break-even point as the fusion reaction released too much energy to get it started.

Several startups, including Inertia, Xcimer, Focused Energy, and First Light, are trying to turn this concept into commercial-scale power plants. Because the NIF laser is based on older technology, the hope is that the new lasers will be more efficient, reducing the energy needed to ignite each fusion reaction and thus making it easier for each reaction to release enough energy to make a commercial-scale power plant profitable.

The agreements between Inertia and LLNL cover two strategic partnership projects and one collaborative research and development agreement. The two organizations say they will work together to develop more advanced lasers and improve fuel targets with a focus on improving performance and manufacturing. Inertia also licenses nearly 200 patents from the laboratory.

It was perhaps inevitable that Inertia and LLNL would continue to work together. Annie Critcher, co-founder and chief scientist at Inertia, helped design the successful trial at NIF that achieved scientific parity. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 paved the way for her to start a company while maintaining her position at LLNL.