German company develops spiral fusion power reactor

Germany Munich startup Proxima Fusion has raised nearly $7.5 million in its first round of funding to make its stellarator fusion power plant a reality.

Design of the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator reactor. Photo: IPP

Proxima was founded by scientists and engineers who previously worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Google X, and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Some of the researchers have experience developing IPP's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), the world's most advanced stellarator fusion reactor, Yahoo reported on May 31.

Most current fusion reactor designs can be divided into two categories: tokamaks and stellarators. Both are magnetically confining fusion devices, in which hydrogen isotopes are heated to temperatures higher than the Sun. These excited particles become an energized plasma that rotates in a circular chamber. Powerful magnetic coils around the chamber confine the charged plasma, where atoms fuse and release enormous amounts of energy.

The tokamak is a doughnut-shaped magnetic confinement device and the leading prototype for fusion reactors. The stellarator is a much more sophisticated design, with a series of magnets twisted around the plasma. Using a complex array of electromagnets to confine the superheated plasma, the stellarator is technically more challenging than the widely used tokamak approach to fusion power. However, if the challenges can be overcome, the stellarator offers many advantages, such as steady-state operation and excess heat management. According to Proxima Fusion, research conducted by the IPP since the W7-X became operational in 2015 could bridge the gap between the tokamak and the stellarator, paving the way for commercialization.

“The experimental progress from W7-X and the recent success in stellarator modeling have changed the situation. Stellarators can now overcome the key problems of tokamak reactors and scale up, contributing to improved plasma stability and high steady-state efficiency,” said Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima.

Proxima is aiming to deploy a new high-efficiency stellarator in a few years and open its first nuclear power plant in the 2030s.

An Khang (According to Yahoo/The Engineer )

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