SPV

  Nuclear fusion is cited as a safe, clean and sustainable energy we all need, but alas to make this technology commercial has been quite a headache. Development has been slow - Iter nuclear fusion project started in 1985 is still only in it's infancy with an experimental plant that is only just being built…

Power generated from nuclear fusion is one of those alternative energy sources that companies have been eyeing for decades. Facilities in the US, Europe, Russia, and Japan are pushing forward toward a way to harness the immense energy generated by the fusing of atoms — fusion fuel produces 10 thousand times more energy than coal burning. But there are still hurdles to overcome before we get our hands on what is considered the "holy grail" of energy sources.

Why don’t we have nuclear fusion power yet? Because it involves taming plasmas at temperatures far hotter than the Sun’s core. But the good news is that physicists are slowly but surely figuring out how.

L’idée de déployer un mini-réacteur nucléaire pour produire l’énergie électrique nécessaire aux forces ne date pas d’hier aux Etats-Unis. Ainsi, le Pentagone avait lancé des le milieux des années 50 des études pour répondre à ce besoin spécifique, et les progrès techniques enregistrés ces dernières années ont permis de revigorer ce concept dès le début des années 2010. Il faudra toutefois attendre 2020 pour que la DARPA s’empare officiellement du projet, et finance une étude préalable pour la conception d’un réacteur nucléaire d’une puissance de 1 à 5 GW, capable d’être embarqué à bord d’un container 20 pieds aérotransportable.

There's no denying it.
Nuclear fusion has the potential to completely transform the U.S. energy industry, and become a primary source of zero-carbon energy. This is why, in a bid to "win the 21st-century economy," the United States is heavily investing in nuclear fusion technology. While scientific consensus is firm that we're still not ready to roll out fusion technology for commercial use, the early stages of renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and small modular reactors demand that we double down on reliable backups.

Tokamak Energy has demonstrated a world-first with its privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak, achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
This is by far the highest temperature ever achieved in a spherical tokamak and by any privately funded tokamak. While several government laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100M degrees in conventional tokamaks, this milestone has been achieved in just five years, for a cost of less than £50m ($70m), in a much more compact fusion device. This achievement further substantiates spherical tokamaks as the optimal route to the delivery of clean, secure, low cost, scalable and globally deployable commercial fusion energy.

Une trentaine de start-up sont actuellement positionnées sur ce segment, stimulé par les innovations technologies (électroaimants, lasers, etc.), l'envolée des financements privés et un intérêt accru des pouvoirs publics. L’une de ces start-up, l’américaine Commonwealth Fusion Systems, espère réaliser le premier réacteur à fusion produisant davantage d’énergie qu’il n’en consomme à l’horizon 2025. Si elle y parvient, elle devancerait le projet Iter qui réunit théoriquement les efforts des plus grands pays du monde et a été amorcé il y a une quarantaine d’années.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems a levé, en décembre 2021, le plus gros investissement privé jamais réalisé dans la fusion nucléaire : 1,8 Md$ (≈1,6 Md€) auprès du fonds américain Tiger Global Management, de nombreux investisseurs privés (dont Bill Gates) et des grands groupes (Google, Eni et Equinor). En novembre dernier, Helion avait levé 500 M$ (≈440 M€) et General Fusion 130 M$ (≈115 M€). Autre acteur majeur, TAE a été fondé dès 1998 et a levé près de 900 M$ (≈800 M€), dont 280 M$ en avril 2021.
Notons aussi que l’Allemand Marvel Fusion (qui travaille en partenariat avec Thales, Siemens Energy et Trumpf) a levé 35 M€ en février 2022, une première pour un acteur d’Europe continentale. 
En France, Renaissance Fusion, fondée en 2020, se distingue de la plupart des autres start-up en misant sur le développement d'un stellarator et non d'un tokamak. Très ambitieuse, elle ambitionne la construction d'un premier prototype de taille commerciale d'ici une dizaine d'année. Elle pourrait pour cela bénéficier d'une partie des 500 M€ du plan France 2030 dédiés aux réacteurs innovants (enveloppe qui exclue le SMR Nuward d'EDF, qui bénéficiera d'un financement spécifique de 500 M€).

More than $3bn was invested in nuclear fusion startups last year — just one of the growing signs that this clean nuclear energy source, previously seen as the realm of science fiction, may be becoming a reality. In the nuclear energy available today, atoms are split to extract large quantities of energy — nuclear fission. But imagine if instead of splitting atoms one could merge them — fusion — and get the same amount of energy while creating vastly less radioactive waste.

Pulsar Fusion Ltd., a nuclear fusion company based in the United Kingdom, has recently designed and successfully tested its first launch-capable, high-power chemical rocket engine.

The company's bid to provide the world with near-limitless energy uses a combination of spherical tokamaks and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. According to reports, tests of the new power electronics showed twice the efficiency of previous systems.

During the recent experiments, the scientists at the facility were able to generate 59 megajoules of energy sustained over a five-second period. This is far higher than the 22 megajoules of energy the facility had managed to produce in its 1997 experiment. During the recent experiment, the average power produced was 11 megawatts per second, the statement said.

Tokamak Network is a platform designed to assure decentralized and secure property the same as Ethereum Main chain while supporting a high level of scalability and extendability. Each Dapp is built easily for a specific purpose through Tokamak Network. Tokamak Network has each Dapp to operate in its own chain. Layer 2 chains are connected to Ethereum’s Main Chain via the Tokamak Protocol. The Tokamak TON token is used as an incentive to correctly decentralize the Tokamak Layer 2 chain. The service operator must deposit TON to open the Layer 2 chain. If the chain runs properly, this deposit will gradually increase.

US government scientists said on Wednesday they have taken an important step in the long trek toward making nuclear fusion - the very process that powers stars - a viable energy source for humankind. Using the world's largest laser, the researchers coaxed fusion fuel for the first time to heat itself beyond the heat they zapped into it, achieving a phenomenon called a burning plasma that marked a stride toward self-sustaining fusion energy.

A new experiment appears to have triggered ignition for the first time, at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, recreating the extreme temperatures and pressures found at the heart of the Sun.

ITER a été lancé pour construire le plus gros "Tokamak" du monde pour essayer de reproduire l’énergie du soleil, énergie à profusion et gratuite, alternative rêvée aux énergies fossiles polluantes. Un défi relevé par l'alliance de 35 pays (l'Europe et les Etats-Unis, l'Inde, le Japon, la Chine, la Corée du Sud et la Russie). Budget estimé : 20 milliards d’euros.

A British fusion firm and University of Oxford spinoff First Light Fusion claims it achieved nuclear fusion with a technique inspired by the pistol shrimp.

C’est une première mondiale pour un tokamak sphérique : le ST-40 de Tokamak Energy a atteint une température de plasma de 100 millions de degrés Celsius, soit le seuil requis pour l’énergie de fusion commerciale. C’est aussi la température la plus élevée jamais atteinte par un tokamak financé par des fonds privés. Tokamak Energy prévoit de mettre en service la toute première usine de fusion au monde au début des années 2030.

Sur le terrain de la fusion nucléaire, l'intelligence artificielle pourrait bientôt jouer un rôle majeur. Des chercheurs de l'École Polytechnique d

Voici un aperçu rapide des principales start-up développant des réacteurs nucléaires (avec un peu de chauvinisme, donc nos 3 français NAAREA, Jimmy et Renaissance Fusion). Ces acteurs se concentrent essentiellement sur des projets de type petits réacteurs modulaires (SMR) et micro réacteurs modulaires (MMR).
Les anglo-saxons sont surreprésentés, notamment dans la fusion nucléaire. Notons que dans ce domaine, une seule start-up d'Europe continentale a réalisé une levée de fonds significative, l'Allemand Marvel Fusion (non représenté dans l'illustration car puissance du réacteur envisagé non disponible).
L'absence d'acteurs russes et chinois s'explique par le manque de données disponibles et par le poids des entreprises et organismes de recherche publics dans ces deux pays. La France est historiquement sur un modèle assez proche mais il y a actuellement une volonté claire du gouvernement de favoriser l'émergence de start-up pour dynamiser le développement de réacteurs innovants.

In a tokamak reactor, controlling this plasma requires constant monitoring of the magnetic field. The DeepMind team was able to train their reinforcement-learning algorithm to control plasma in a computer simulation. After the AI successfully controlled the virtual plasma, it was then allowed to control the magnets in the Variable Configuration Tokamak (TCV), an experimental reactor in Lausanne, Switzerland. The AI was able to control the plasma for a total of two seconds, which is the total amount of time the TCV reactor can run before it overheats.

Chinese scientists in Shanghai have been working on a project to replicate the sun’s energy process with a comparatively low-cost approach and, after a year of experiments, the technique has shown promise, according to the South China Morning Post. “Our goal is to achieve sustainable fusion,” project lead Zhang Zhe from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics in Beijing said in a phone interview to SCMP.

According to the Financial Times report, one glass of the fuel used for fusion energy has the energy potential of one million gallons of oil and can power a home for 800 years. Of course, there have been several technological boundaries in the way of achieving net fusion energy production in recent years, including the production of magnets powerful enough to maintain the super-hot plasma required for fusion.

For eight years, our experts have been supporting the intergovernmental organization ITER to make commercial nuclear fusion reactors a reality and unlock a large-scale, low-carbon energy source based on the same principle that powers our sun and stars. Tractebel’s teams have worked on various contracts, from assistance to the Project Owner, to facilities design projects and reviews of the execution studies and documents . Following this long and successful collaboration, ITER has awarded Tractebel a new four-year contract to continue supervising the design and construction of the buildings.

This milestone actually matters. A burning plasma means plenty of energy production and now we can really scale up with condidence and generate sustainable energy production. hopefully we can do a lot better than heat water, though we will catch plenty of that. We actually have way too few methods of producing eneergy but no one ever mentions that.