ITER is set to be the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion reactor. Postponed againThe €25 billion megaproject is due to be operational in 2034 and start generating electricity in 2039 – almost a decade later than originally planned.
Thirty-five countries, including the UK, the US, China and Russia, launched ITER in 2006 to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of nuclear fusion power. Startups may end up beating them in the end.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that ITER will play a supporting role as private companies race to commercialize fusion energy, but that doesn’t make it obsolete.
We spoke with some of Europe’s biggest fusion energy startups to find out more about how ITER’s recent delays will impact the industry going forward. For some, these challenges demonstrate the need for greater collaboration between the public and private sectors.
Private companies take the lead
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“Public sector delays make it unlikely that ITER will be completed in time to meaningfully impact the energy transition and clean energy baseload needed by 2050,” Ryan Ramsey, chief operating officer at First Light Fusion, told TNW.
“The civilian fusion sector is developing viable fusion programs at a much faster pace.”
First Light is developing a reactor based on the science of inertial confinement fusion, which it believes will be “faster and cheaper” than the tokamak reactor that ITER is building.
There are many different approaches when it comes to harnessing fusion energy. The most well-studied is magnetic confinement, used in devices such as tokamaks and stellarators, which use powerful magnetic fields to confine hot plasma. Then there is inertial confinement fusion (ICF), as seen at the National Ignition Facility in the US, where fusion conditions are achieved by compressing fuel pellets with a powerful laser beam. There are many variations on these two paradigms.
First Light is pursuing a type of ICF called projectile fusion, which involves firing something like a copper coin at high speeds at a target containing fusion fuel.
“ITER has provided important scientific insights for us, but they are completely unrelated to what we do,” Ramsay said. “We are an agile, fast-growing company and are rapidly advancing our technology developments, and the news about ITER reinforces our strategy as we continue to move forward.”
For First Light, ITER is not as useful as it once was, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useless.
Team up
“The civilian fusion industry benefits in many ways from the research and development done by ITER,” Peter Roos, CEO of Stockholm-based Novatron, told TNW.
ITER is one of the largest scientific experiments in history and has already achieved many engineering breakthroughs in its nearly two decades of development, including magnets, heat-resistant materials, Tritium breeding This is a crucial process for a self-sustaining fusion reactor.
However, Roos also believes that a “private initiative” could be the first to deliver a commercially viable power plant.
Ross’s company, Novatron, is pursuing a new type of magnetic confinement fusion known as a “mirror machine.” The startup claims its design solves one of fusion’s biggest challenges: keeping the plasma stable.
“To me, the delay to ITER is not a surprise,” Roos said, “but it highlights that ITER should start prioritizing the development of common technologies that are valuable to private industry.”
That sentiment was echoed by Tokamak Energy, Europe’s best-funded fusion startup, which is based in Oxford, UK. Spokesman Stuart White said the company wants to foster greater knowledge exchange between ITER and the private sector.
ITER is the first Public-Private Workshop In May, the institute announced it aims to foster “multidisciplinary approaches to fusion innovation” in response to the “changing fusion research and development environment.”
“We are encouraged to see ITER sharing information and being more open and collaborative,” White said.
When ITER launched, there were five fusion start-ups; today there are nearly 50. As these companies race to commercialize fusion energy, it is becoming increasingly clear that ITER is falling behind.
But these companies still face big challenges: They’re still in the research and development stage and have yet to demonstrate net energy gain (the point at which the energy produced by the fusion reaction exceeds the energy used to create it), much less build reactors that can produce electricity at a competitive price.
In the face of these hurdles, it makes sense to tap ITER’s expertise: With climate change worsening and the need for clean energy greater than ever, the public and private sectors of the industry would be wise to merge, not separate.
