US backs Sydney fusion start-up’s nuclear ambitions
HB11 Energy will get cash and access to massive lasers to help it build a nuclear fusion system it says will be capable of clean, near-limitless electricity generation. US government has granted the start-up of Sydney's HB11 Energy, which has demonstrated its process can release nuclear energy, but currently the power produced is 10,000 times less than the power consumed by the laser to trigger the nuclear reaction. The grant would also give HB11 access to an enormous, petawatt-class laser at the University of Rochester in New York, as well as access to nuclear modelling systems and expertise. The US department has said it wants to build a pilot nuclear fusion plant next decade, with a view to having fusion-generated energy distributed on the US power grid by 2050. HB11 is in the running to participate in a public-private partnership with the US department.
Publié : il y a 2 ans par John Davidson dans Business
The start-up has already demonstrated its process can release nuclear energy, but currently the power produced is 10,000 times less than the power consumed by the laser to trigger the nuclear reaction in the first place, HB11 Energy co-founder and managing director, Warren McKenzie, told The Australian Financial Review.
The US grant was only “in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars”, but would also give HB11 access to an enormous, petawatt-class laser at the University of Rochester in New York, as well as access to nuclear modelling systems and expertise, so the start-up could investigate the unexpected results it got in its past experiments, which released more nuclear energy than expected, Dr McKenzie said.
The grant also puts HB11 in the running to participate in a public-private partnership with the US department, which has said it wants to build a pilot nuclear fusion plant next decade, with a view to having fusion-generated energy distributed on the US power grid by 2050.
“We’re in Gate 14 of the Melbourne Cup. The finishing line is a very big cheque to build a fusion reactor,” Dr McKenzie said.
Inertial confinement fusion is less popular than magnetic confinement fusion, which uses huge, magnetic chambers to suspend atoms heated to tens of million of degrees, at which temperature the atoms form plasma and overcome their natural repulsion to each other, allowing them to fuse into bigger atoms.
But it was an inertial confinement fusion system at a National Ignition Facility lab in California that late last year was the first fusion reactor in history to generate more energy from the reaction (3.15 megajoules) than was consumed by the massive laser triggering the reaction (2.05 megajoules).
Unlike HB11’s hydrogen/boron reaction, the NIF experiment fused two forms of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) together. But it did validate the concept of inertial confinement fusion, Dr McKenzie said.
“Laser fusion has been all the rage since then,” he said.
Les sujets: Startups, Australia, ESG