UK Startup Achieves ‘Projectile Fusion’ Breakthrough

A British startup pioneering a new approach to fusion energy has successfully combined atomic nuclei, in what the UK regulator described as an important step in the decades-long effort to generate electricity from the reaction that powers the sun. From a report: Oxford-based First Light Fusion, which has been developing an approach called projectile fusion since 2011, said it had produced energy in the form of neutrons by forcing deuterium isotopes to fuse, validating years of research. While other fusion experiments have generated more power for longer, either by using “tokamak” machines or high-powered lasers, First Light says its approach, which involves firing a projectile at a target containing the fuel, could offer a faster route to commercial fusion power. “The value of this [result] is that it offers potentially a much cheaper, a much easier path to power production,” said chief executive Nicholas Hawker.

To achieve fusion, First Light used a hyper-velocity gas gun to launch a projectile at a speed of 6.5km per second — about 10 times faster than a rifle bullet — at a tiny target designed to amplify the energy of the impact and force the deuterium fuel to fuse. The design of the target — a clear cube, a little over a centimetre wide, enclosing two spherical fuel capsules — is the key technology and is closely guarded by the company. “It is the ultimate espresso capsule,” Hawker told the Financial Times last year. First Light, which is backed by China’s Tencent, hopes to manufacture and sell the targets to future power plants — built to its design — which would need to vaporise one every 30 seconds to generate continual power. Further reading: So How Close Are We Now to Nuclear Fusion Energy? (August 2021).

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