For decades scientists have tried to replicate nuclear fusion – the process that powers the Sun. If successful it would provide a source of energy with far less waste than the current generation of fission reactors and would generate electricity without carbon emissions.
In the suburbs of Vancouver, a team is working on what they think is humanity’s best chance at clean, unlimited power, something we desperately need. A startup called General Fusion is building a nuclear fusion reactor and, if they succeed, it could mean the end of the fossil fuel era. Instead, we’d get our power from the…
John Holdren has heard the old joke a million times: fusion energy is 30 years away—and always will be. Despite the broken promises, Holdren, who early in his career worked as a physicist on fusion power, believes passionately that fusion research has been worth the billions spent over the past few decades—and that the work…
Limitless power with virtually no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. For decades, researchers have looked for ways to control, confine and sustain fusion as an energy source. But there has been a lot of progress on a small scale, building on years of…
Sitting in the control room of Tri Alpha Energy’s experimental fusion reactor, in front of computer screens labeled “plasma guns” and “shot control,” I feel slightly anxious as we make preparations to fire. This reactor is an early prototype for a power plant that would generate energy in a controlled version of what happens inside…
No energy technology is more tantalizing than fusion, but no energy technology has proved more disappointing. So how has a fusion company in Southern California raised nearly half a billion dollars from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Paul Allen? Does it actually see a way to build a reactor that could generate vast amounts…
The machine lives in a white building in an Orange County office park so uninteresting-looking that not even the person who’s supposed to be taking me there can find it. We literally drive right past it and have to double back.
A group of start-ups is promising a new and virtually unlimited source of power, one that produces none of the gases scientists say contribute to global warming.
Innovator: Dennis WhyteAge: 51Director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology