Frequently Asked Questions on Fusion

Not at all! On the contrary, we are dwarfs on giants’ shoulders, thankful to public laboratories for decades of fusion research. As a result of that, ITER is on the verge of proving the scientific feasibility of net fusion heat. In parallel, times are mature for startups like Renaissance Fusion to address the economic attractiveness of fusion. The missions are complementary. The strengths are complementary too: start-ups cannot do it alone, they need collaborations with and validation by the scientific community; public research, on the other hand, can benefit from the frequent, rapid iterations of start-ups, and from their agility in adopting emerging technologies such as HTS, which would not have been possible at ITER.

Q denotes the “fusion gain”, and Q = 10 means that the reactor produces 10x more heat than it consumes to keep the plasma hot. ITER has a high probability to reach this important milestone in the late 2030’s. In comparison, start-ups take a potentially faster but more uncertain path. Individually considered, their probability of success is lower than ITER’s, and the year in which they will attain Q = 10, if ever, is more uncertain. The ensemble of all most promising fusion start-ups, though, has a serious chance that 2-3 of them will reach Q = 10 before ITER. But again, this is probability. As humans, it makes sense that we place multiple bets on fusion, including a safe one like ITER.

Theranos was built upon the vision, delusion and, unfortunately, fraud by a single founder without deep technical foundations. By contrast, fusion benefits from over 70 years of scientific experimentation and progress. Public institutes regularly peer-review, cross-check and reproduce each other’s results. More than 40 startups are now developing prototype reactors to commercialize fusion, and while it is relatively easy to fake blood test results, it is much harder to fake the production of electricity or heat. That being said, like in any other emerging sector, some fusion companies will fail anyhow, not owing to fraud, but due to failure to retire all technical risks or to become cost-competitive. Some other fusion companies will specialize, some will pivot, and some will succeed.

We are most likely to succeed because we are reinventing the best fusion device (the stellarator – continuous, cheap electricity) and the most efficient fusion reaction (D-T) with the best/only solutions to the only three caveats of D-T stellarators:
1) Complex coil shape – Our solution to this is the best: our coils are subject to lower electromagnetic forces than competitors’ and are immune from the limitations of 3D metal printing.
2) Large size – Everybody wants to build HTS coils to generate stronger magnetic fields, resulting in smaller fusion devices. Our approach is the best: competitors buy scarce, pricey HTS tapes, whereas Renaissance Fusion is building machines to produce and sell its own HTS with a unique, wide form-factor that will instantly enable (i) large manufacturing volumes and (ii) a novel way to directly make laser-precise HTS coils. This will be faster, simpler, cheaper and more precise than winding, epoxying and positioning traditional HTS tapes.
3) Neutron-induced radioactivity and damage - We are the only magnetic fusion organization -whether public or private- with a solution to this. This is a unique competitive advantage, in a world where everybody, thanks to HTS (see point 2) is rushing to more compact fusion devices and Q>1 but seems to ignore the consequences for materials and economic feasibility. In compact reactors, the same amount of heat and neutrons will impinge on smaller surfaces, resulting in even faster damage and activation, and thus in more frequent maintenance and replacement.
Our solution is the most effective mix between invention, elegance, project feasibility and commercial attractiveness to bring fusion energy out of the lab and onto the grid.