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Last April, Francesco Sciortino told Startupbusiness in an interview what the company Proxima Fusion, whose CEO he is, is doing and why Europe is now the place where nuclear fusion research is most advanced. In these hours, the Munich-based company has sent another important signal to the entire scientific community and the world by publishing information on the project it is working on in a spirit of great sharing and open source.
Proxima Fusion, together with its partners that include the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Instituto Superior Técnico Lisboa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, publishes a peer-reviewed paper announcing the world’s first integrated concept for a commercial nuclear fusion power plant designed to operate reliably and continuously. Published in Fusion Engineering and Design, the Stellaris project represents an important milestone for the fusion industry and promotes the thesis of quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators as the most promising path to a commercial fusion power plant.
Stellaris is based on the record-breaking results of the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) research experiment in Germany, the world’s most advanced QI stellarator prototype, led by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and the result of more than €1.3 billion in funding from the German federal government and the European Union.
Towards commercial nuclear fusion
Stellaris’ work is the result of a public-private partnership between Proxima Fusion engineers and IPP scientists. The IPP’s first spin-out company, Proxima Fusion built on the Institute’s cutting-edge experimental and theoretical work, with a strong engineering workforce from Google, Tesla, McLaren Formula-1 and SpaceX.
Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, states in the note announcing the publication: ‘The road to commercial fusion power plants is now open. Stellaris is the first peer-reviewed design of a fusion power plant designed to operate reliably and continuously, without the instabilities and disruptions found in tokamaks and other approaches . Given the growing global demand for energy and Europe’s increasing need for energy security, unlocking clean, unlimited energy through fusion has never been more urgent, and Proxima is committed to leading Europe towards a fusion-powered future.”
Fusion energy already in the next decade
Stellaris is designed to produce far more energy per unit volume than any power plant ever designed before.
The much stronger magnetic fields, enabled by high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology, allow a significant reduction in size compared to previous stellarator concepts. Smaller reactors can be built faster, provide more efficient energy production and promise to be cheaper in both construction and operation. The Stellaris concept also uses only currently available materials, which means it will be possible to build it by expanding current supply chains.
Proxima’s simulation-based engineering approach enabled rapid design iterations, taking advantage of advanced computing. Stellaris is the first stellarator QI-based power plant project that simultaneously satisfies all major physical and engineering constraints, as demonstrated by electromagnetic, structural, thermal and neutron simulations. Thanks to the marriage of physics and engineering, made possible by the collaboration with the IPP, Proxima is now ready to take a bold leap with its demonstration stellarator, Alpha, instead of building several devices with incremental improvements over decades.
The revolutionary technical features of the Stellaris project include: a magnetic field design that complies with all major physics optimisation objectives for power generation
support structures capable of withstanding the forces present during operation at full power;
a demonstration that HTS technology can be effectively integrated into high-field stellarators, while ensuring effective heat management on internal surfaces; a neutron blanket concept that adapts to the complex geometry of stellarators.
The power plant
With its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) demonstration magnet in 2027, Proxima Fusion will completely scale back HTS stellarator technology. The company will demonstrate that stellarators are capable of producing net energy with its Alpha demo stellarator in 2031, and aims to provide clean, safe and unlimited fusion energy to the grid in 2030.
Per Helander, head of the Stellarator Theory Division at the Max Planck IPP, says: ‘The IPP is a pioneer in stellarator optimisation. In recent years we have been able to design stellarators whose physical properties are predicted to provide unprecedented performance. This still leaves many technological and engineering challenges, problems that have been courageously addressed by Proxima Fusion in collaboration with the IPP in this unique study. This is important and necessary work on the road to a fusion power plant, which we hope to accelerate thanks to this collaboration.”
Jorrit Lion, co-founder and chief scientist of Proxima Fusion, adds: ‘For the first time, we are demonstrating that QI-HTS stellarator-based fusion power plants are possible. The Stellaris project covers an unprecedented breadth of physical and engineering analysis in a coherent design. To make fusion energy a reality, we must now proceed with a comprehensive engineering project and continue to develop the enabling technologies.
Ian Hogarth, partner at Plural, one of the first investors in Proxima Fusion, says: “When Proxima began its journey, the founders said: ‘This is possible, we will prove it to you’. And so we did. Stellaris positions QI-HTS stellarators as a leading technology in the global commercial fusion race’. (picture shows a rendering of the project)
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