Taking a second look at nuclear fusion

Doug Richardson says it's too early to dismiss the viability of nuclear fusion just because past experiments have shown that the process requires more energy than it produces (see Nuclear power is particularly green energy: get used to it).

Richardson, CEO of British Columbia-based General Fusion, says his company will prove that the latest computing technology can be combined with decades-old processes to result in a net gain of energy in nuclear fusion for the first time.

General Fusion is developing nuclear fusion technology that could one day provide power more cheaply than coal and more safely than nuclear fission plants. The company is using 30-year old magnetized target fusion (MTF) technology but applying modern computer processing capabilities to control and speed compressions.

“The fundamental rule is that machining something accurately is expensive. To make less-expensive equipment and control it accurately can be inexpensive,” Richardson said.

Richardson concedes that nuclear fusion has had its fair share of outlandish claims about the sector’s potential (see Controversial D2Fusion changing hands). However, Richardson said it’s an essential technology because solar, wind and hydro energy technologies won’t be able to displace coal’s dominance of the energy market.

Nuclear fusion holds promise “because of the amount of fuel available in the planet and the low cost of the fuel. If you achieve it, you can change the way energy is produced, and consequently the geopolitical climate will change,” Richardson said. “It would be quite leveling to the playing field and quite an amazing achievement, so because of that people tend to jump on claims before they should.”

General Fusion is seeking to raise an additional $4.75 million before the end of the year to close its Series A round at $13.75 million. The company secured $9 million from GrowthWorks Capital, Braemar Energy Ventures, Chrysalix Energy Ventures and the Entrepreneurs Funds in August, in addition to about $2 million in seed and friends-and-family funding (see Investors get messy with bugs, worms and nuclear fusion).

General Fusion also secured C$13.9 million (US$12.9 million) from Sustainable Technology Development Canada in August, but that money requires matching funds and is to be dispersed as the company meets technological milestones (see Does Think's revival signal cleantech's recovery?).

The capital is expected to finance the first, two-year phase of General Fusion's project, which is now underway. Richardson estimated a cost of $47 million to $50 million for the entire four-year project.

In the first phase, General Fusion plans to build full-scale prototypes to demonstrate that all the elements work to the specifications required. That includes the magnetized ball of plasma, and demonstrating the compression screen. However, the company doesn’t plan to build the reactor until the second phase, which is expected to start in July 2011.

General Fusion plans to return to private financiers before beginning the final phase.

“By then we will be backed by a whole lot of technological demonstrations that what we do is feasible,” Richardson said. “It will be a lot easier to raise funds.”

After the second phase is completed, it could take five years or more until the technology could be incorporated in a grid-connected power plant. But General Fusion will likely seek licensing agreements or strategic partners for that step in the technology deployment, Richardson said.

“We’re interested in the fusion part, and with that part we have value-add,” he said. “Building commercial plants is not something our company has the skill set in, nor do we think we can add value to it.”

Richardson said the company’s approach is unique, but he listed one potential competitor, Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Tri Alpha Energy, a stealth-mode company that raised $40 million in 2007 to develop advanced plasma nuclear fusion technology (see Now official: big biofuel IPO).

The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and France-based international consortium ITER are also developing nuclear fusion technology, though the end-goals and processes are different from General Fusion (see New laser could bring fusion energy’s star power to earth and $13B nuclear fusion research agreement signed).

In nuclear fusion, a fuel is brought to a particular temperature. The time of confinement and the density must produce a constant, which allows for low density paired with longer confinement, or high density with short confinement. The ITER project is using low density and longer confinement, while Lawrence Livermore is extremely high density.

“In between is 10 orders of magnitude that can be explored,” Richardson said.

General Fusion is using acoustic waves to crush a contained, medium-density, magnetized plasma. The company has two patents pending on the process that controls the impact to crush the plasma.

General Fusion, however, has agreed to work with the Los Alamos National Lab, which is researching magnetized target fusion. The two plan to share results, expertise and equipment.

Still, public perception is one problem facing the sector, Richardson said.

“We’re doing nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission,” he said. “Because the general population is uninformed about it, they lump all nuclear technologies together, which is a mistake. Nuclear fusion is more benign than fission. There are other types of nuclear people don’t flinch at at all, such as nuclear medicine.”