01 Abundant Fuel
Just a single gram of fusion fuel releases as much energy as burning 10,000 kg of coal. This enormous energy density generates the power for a 250,000 person-city for a full year with only a few hundred kilograms of deuterium and lithium.
02 Safe Operations
In a stellarator, fusion will extinguish itself within a few seconds if the power plant is damaged or perturbed in some way.
03 Improved Impacts
Fusion systems eliminate emissions contributing to climate change and improve the environmental impact of mining and refining needed for today’s electricity generation.
04 Locally Available
Fusion power systems can be sized to support localized grids with siting in proximity to where the energy is used. This avoids the costs and very lengthy easement & licensing process for long-distance transmission.
05 Always On
Fusion systems complement wind and solar with an unvarying and continuous supply of electricity that supports grid stability.
Achieving the Triple Product: Time, Temperature, Density
There are three factors that determine the performance of a given fusion concept: the temperature and density of the ions undergoing fusion and the energy confinement time (how long the energy is retained in the fusion plasma until it is lost to the surroundings).
Improving one factor at the expense of the others will not achieve fusion conditions. Stellarators have demonstrated high levels of performance in each of the triple product categories and progress is underway to achieve these peak conditions in unison.
Optimizing Stellarators for Electricity Production
After many decades of research, the performance of stellarators has been shown to scale very predictably given its simplicity of operation and proven plasma stability at these high ion and electron energy levels. This reduces the risk of unforeseen physics complications that can occur with other fusion concepts when progressing into the net gain energy regimes needed for commercial operation.
This combined metric of “hot enough, close enough, and for long enough” is the figure of merit – referred to as the triple product.
These powerful new tools have resulted in a next generation optimized stellarator for superior confinement and fusion performance.
Advancements in analytical theory, supercomputing and sophisticated codes uncover previously hidden magnetic field configurations that provide optimal confinement of the plasma for the greatest and most efficient power generation.
New high-temperature superconduction (HTS) magnets can carry over 200 times the current carrying capacity of copper wires for a more compact stellarator. It also requires less cooling power than conventional low temperature magnets.
Digital design optimization with hybrid in-situ additive-subtractive manufacturing can enable the rapid, large scale build of complex-shaped, dimensionally-accurate stellarator components with fewer parts that perform better and at lower cost.
Stellarator technology to transform energy markets with fusion power
