Avalanche’s desktop fusion reactor delivers extremely hot plasma

No one has made a fusion reactor capable of generating power, but physicists have a pretty good roadmap for how to get there. One of the key milestones is heating the fusion fuel to over 10 million degrees Celsius, nearly as hot as the center of the sun.

Avalanche He exclusively told TechCrunch that this Desktop-scale integration prototype This technology has surpassed this milestone, heating the plasma to nearly 11 million degrees Celsius. Only a few companies have been able to achieve this feat.

Most fusion startups have spent more money to reach this goal as well. Avalanche said it spent less than $50 million in venture capital to reach the goal.

Plasma physicists do not measure temperature with a thermometer, but instead study the energy of particles within the plasma using a scale known as kiloelectronvolts, or kEV.

The fusion scientist is always looking for experiments beyond 1 keV. “This is hot enough that the world is taking notice,” said Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. He said.

Plasma temperatures are one of the main variables physicists study when evaluating a fusion experiment. If the plasma is not heated enough, its molecules have less chance of colliding with each other, reducing the chances of them fusing to form a new atom. But if the plasma is hot enough — and dense enough for long enough — fusion reactions will occur, releasing large amounts of energy.

This achievement is no guarantee of success, but it does indicate that the startup is on the path to generating conditions in its reactor that can spark fusion reactions capable of producing more energy than it needs to get started.

Avalanche’s small-scale prototypes suggest that fusion power may operate on smaller scales than its competitors seek. Most fusion startups are designing large reactors capable of generating tens or hundreds of megawatts of electricity. But if Avalanche can develop a smaller, less expensive fusion power plant, it could pose a challenge to a number of other energy technologies, from diesel generators to natural gas turbines.

Avalanche has not published the findings in a peer-reviewed journal, although it said the report had been verified by a plasma physicist at MIT.

Most nuclear fusion reactors are large devices, but Avalanche decided to go small, in part because smaller devices are easier to replicate. The fusion core of the startup’s newly created Jyn device is just five inches in diameter. The company said it has updated the device 25 times since last fall.