Marvel Fusion was founded in 2019. It is one of many startups trying to develop commercial nuclear fusion power reactors. The German company is utilizing an innovative approach that employs lasers instead of magnets. So far they have raised seventy million dollars. They are still years and billions of dollars away from even constructing a prototype. The company is testing their design using computer modeling and believes that its approach will be more efficient than competing efforts.
There are two approaches being employed by companies trying to develop commercial fusion. These are magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.
Magnetic confinement often uses a tokamak which is a round donut shaped device with super strong magnets to confine the plasma so a fusion reaction can take place. It is a more popular choice than inertial confinement with a number of startups and a huge international collaboration in France all chasing it.
Inertial fusion confinement takes place when the fuel is compressed so intensely and quickly that it reaches the conditions necessary for fusion. Extremely powerful lasers are usually used to compress and ignite the fuel.
Sehila M. Gonzalez de Vicente is a nuclear fusion physicist at the International Atomic Energy Agency. She told an interviewer that “The Tokamak concept based on magnetic confinement is the most advanced fusion device. Nevertheless, laser-based concepts also represent a promising approach.
Marvel’s approach is for the lasers to directly impact the fuel capsule. Moritz vol der Linden is a cofounder and CEO at Marvel Fusion. He said that direct drive is more efficient than the alternative which is called indirect laser fusion. He noted that, “We need considerably less energy to ignite and burn our fuel than comparable thermonuclear models that rely on high temperatures.”
Linden spent twenty years in finance and technology. His previous work included collaboration with a physicist named Karl-Georg Schlesinger to do due diligence on another fusion company. They decided that that approach was not practical but were inspired by that work to found Marvel Fusion.
The Marvel Fusion design depends on advanced lasers. Linden claims that their lasers are twenty years ahead of the lasers being used by the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Marvel Fusion plans to use hydrogen-boron 11 as the fuel. This fuel results in less waste than the deuterium-tritium fuel used in more conventional fusion devices. In the primary fusion reaction, helium nuclei will be the only by product. In one tenth of one percent of all the fusion reactions, a small number of fast neutrons are produced. Although these fast neutrons are responsible for radioactive wastes in conventional nuclear fission reactors, they are not enough to produce any long-lived radioactive wastes, according to Marvel.
Marvel Fusion is still in its early stages and is only a computer simulation at this point. They have not raised enough money to build a prototype. Such a prototype would cost billions of dollars. They hope to have a laboratory test version of their design in five years and a prototype power plant within ten years.