Fusion energy developer Helion Energy said yesterday it has become the first private company to announce exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius in its sixth fusion generator prototype, Trenta. It also announced its Trenta prototype recently finished a 16-month testing campaign, completing almost 10,000 high-power pulses.
This week marked two major milestones for fusion energy. On June 15, San Diego-based General Atomics (GA) said it was ready to ship the first module of the Central Solenoid—the world’s most powerful magnet—which will become a central component of ITER, the world’s largest experimental fusion facility that is under construction in France.
A Canadian company, one of several betting on alternative approaches to fusion energy, announced today it will begin to build a pilot power plant next year in the United Kingdom.
A nuclear fusion startup backed by billionaire Jeff Bezos will build its first pilot power plant outside of London, potentially accelerating a new way of generating clean energy.
Fusion energy advocates in Congress and private industry are protesting the Energy Department’s lack of support for a pilot reactor this decade that could demonstrate whether the technology can produce affordable, carbon-free electricity.
The existential threat of the climate emergency poses perhaps the greatest danger to human health and prosperity we have ever faced. And it carries with it a particular challenge: even with current growth in renewable energy development, a significant portion of future energy is projected to be supplied by greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels.
This week, on 1st June, the U.K. Regulatory Horizons Council (RHC) published a report that set out how the UK can support the rapid and safe introduction of fusion energy.
China broke the record by keeping the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) by achieving plasma temperature at 120 million Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million Celsius for 20 seconds, a major step toward the test run of the fusion reactor.
The House Science Committee has introduced a bipartisan bill that recommends Congress ramp up funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science from $7 billion to nearly $11 billion over the next five years. It also updates policy guidance for the office’s research programs and sets funding targets for its major facility projects.
The dream of pollution and radiation-free electricity derived from nuclear fusion could be a step closer to reality thanks to a breakthrough by British scientists.