Page 30 - EE Times Europe March 2022

30 EE|Times EUROPE

Nuclear Fusion Research Looks to Secure the Future of Energy

overcome the challenges that traditional
tokamak reactors face, such as the necessity
for deuterium-tritium–handling technologies,
tritium scarcity, and the size and expense of
superconducting magnets. The TAE reactor is
powered by hydrogen and boron. Only three
helium nuclei, known as alpha particles, and
X-rays are produced in hydrogen-boron fusion,
and their energy is utilized to power a turbine.
TAE Technologies’ staff of engineers
and scientists work in the California labs,
but globally, TAE has a staff of 250 people
specializing in reactor development and
nuclear-fusion technologies. The company
has raised more than US$880 million in
private funding from institutional investors,
including Google, NEA, Venrock, and
Wellcome Trust, and family foundations
Addison Fischer, the Samberg Family, and
Figure 3: TAE technology (Source: TAE Technologies) Charles Schwab, among others.
General Fusion uses a plasma-confinement
method, dubbed Magnetized Target Fusion
overcoming the forces that reject them and monitor tokamak plasma performance. (MTF), that relies on simple electromagnets
allowing the ions to join, or fuse. As a result, TAE Technologies, founded in 1998 as a operating on a pulsed basis to achieve fusion.
energy is released, and the plasma expands, privately held spinoff of the University of The process can be repeated in a cycle.
pushing against the magnetic field. The California, Irvine, has a proprietary approach It works like this:
change in field causes current to flow and, to fusion. The approach uses a mechanism • A vessel is filled with liquid metal, which
hence, electricity to be produced, which is that produces and confines plasma and oper- is spun until the metal forms a cavity.
used to power electrical loads (Figure 1). ates at higher temperatures to achieve fusion • Hydrogen plasma is injected into the
FRC devices confine plasma on closed mag- with greater stability, and therefore greater resulting cavity.
netic field lines in the form of a self-stable safety, than other technologies that try to • The plasma is compressed and heated to
torus. Together with the spheromak, they are exploit the process that powers the sun. more than 100 million degrees Celsius,
considered part of the compact toroid class TAE’s concept arose from a desire to and fusion occurs.
of fusion devices. FRC devices normally have
more elongated plasma than spheromaks.
The reactor used by the ITER multinational
fusion research project is a tokamak design.
The doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber of
the tokamak is its beating heart. The vacuum
chamber is free of air and contaminants.
Magnets hold and regulate the plasma,
which is charged before the gaseous fuel is
introduced. When a large electrical current
is passed through the vessel, the gas breaks
down electrically, becomes ionized when
electrons are stripped from the nuclei, and
produces plasma.
ITER uses superconducting magnets to
confine the plasma (toroidal field coils) and
maintain its form and stability (poloidal field
coils). A magnetic cage separates the plasma
from the containment vessel. When driven by
68,000 A, the magnetic field may reach
11.8 T, nearly 250,000× that of Earth’s mag-
netic field. Each magnet is 17 × 9 meters in
size and weighs 320 tons.
Other fusion components include the
vacuum vessel, a double-walled container used
to house the fusion reaction in a vacuum.
Cryogenic systems cool magnets and achieve
ideal vacuum conditions. Remote handling
systems use human-assisted robotics and
virtual reality to monitor, maintain, and
replace components. Diagnostic systems Figure 4: Superheated plasma is the key to achieving fusion energy. (Source: General Fusion)

MARCH 2022 | www.eetimes.eu