Energy company claims its new fusion technology can provide heat and power to 70,000 homes:
Fusion can provide abundant, air-pollution-free power without the long-lasting nuclear waste or meltdown risks carried with current fission tech, if it's successfully harnessed.
A nuclear fusion company from the United Kingdom is leveraging an initiative in the United States to design and build a breakthrough reactor capable of powering 70,000 homes, according to a news release from developer Tokamak Energy.
The "early look" at the design was showcased during an October conference of physics experts in Atlanta. It's the result of a U.S. Energy Department fusion decadal development program announced by the Biden administration in 2022, all per Tokamak and a White House statement.
"The first design details of our high-field spherical tokamak created great excitement," Tokamak Energy President Michael Ginsberg said in the company's report. The statement adds that the goal is for net power to be generated at the pilot plant by the middle of the next decade.
The company is named after typically doughnut-shaped machines developed by experts around the world to contain and sustain fusion reactions. The devices must control chemistry that creates an environment hotter than the sun's core, per Tokamak.
The research could have energy-transforming potential.
That's because fusion can provide abundant, air-pollution-free power without the long-lasting nuclear waste or meltdown risks carried with current fission tech, if it's successfully harnessed. Fission produces electricity at around 440 plants worldwide, as noted by the World Nuclear Association. Fission splits atoms to make energy. Fusion combines them, per U.S. government experts.
Tokamak's proposed tokamak would leverage superconducting magnets "to confine and control the deuterium and tritium hydrogen fuel." The company has been working with the units for more than a decade. It's the first private company to hit the plasma benchmark temperature of an incomprehensible 100 million degrees Celsius in a sphere-shaped unit, all per the news release.
Fission energy is making a comeback, as well. Microsoft recently announced plans to reopen a part of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania to offset energy used by its data centers. The nuclear plant experienced an accident in 1979 and was partially shuttered. The rest of it was closed in 2019 for economic reasons, according to ABC News.