Part 1 of 2 Parts
Pacific Fusion (PF) and General Atomics (GA) recently announced plans to test Pacific Fusion’s pulser-driven inertial fusion energy concept, with commercial fusion power as the goal.
Keith LeChien is the PF cofounder and chief technology officer. He said, “We are building a fusion machine and testing all equipment—including components and a pulser module—at our PF test center. GA’s engineering expertise remains an important part of our progress, and we expect this collaboration to continue through future phases of development.”
Pacific Fusion is based in the Bay Area city of Fremont, Calif., where testing during last winter demonstrated that components of its pulser modules met performance and reliability expectations. Now, the company plans to test a production-scale pulser module designed to store electrical energy in a series of staged capacitors and deliver it in precisely controlled bursts. They will build one hundred and fifty-six such modules into a demonstration system by 2030. PF said earlier this month that it expects the machine to achieve net facility gain, generating more fusion energy out than all energy stored in the system.
LeChien explained, “Pacific Fusion is leading in pulsed magnetic fusion system design, including target physics, pulsed power, and mechanical engineering. GA has supported PF since our founding, contributing valuable engineering expertise. Their role has included system mechanical engineering analysis, benchtop prototype testing, and some infrastructure planning.”
Anantha Krishnan is the senior vice president of the General Atomics Energy Group. He said that GA’s expertise in computational modeling design, fusion science, and engineering “offers a powerful launchpad for fast-moving start-ups like Pacific Fusion.” Now that PF is progressing to module construction, GA’s role has expanded to include collaboration on full-scale fusion power plant components including system operations, cryogenics, manufacturing at production scale, and target fabrication.
GA is located in San Diego, about four hundred and fifty miles south of the PF headquarters in Fremont, California. GA has operated the DIII-D magnetic fusion tokamak there as a Department of Energy (DoE) user facility since 1986 and worked on DIII-D’s precursors since the 1950s. GA’s fusion expertise includes supplying components for ITER and manufacturing inertial fusion targets for the laser-driven National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It also shared its own magnetic tokamak fusion pilot plant design in 2022.
Krishnan said, “General Atomics has developed significant capabilities in fusion science and technology over several decades of research and development. We are now applying these capabilities to help fusion energy companies tackle some of the toughest scientific and engineering challenges in achieving the goal of commercial fusion energy.”
Krishnan added, “GA’s business model is to provide our unique technical expertise and capabilities to enable our collaborators in the fusion energy industry to successfully bring fusion energy to the market. We work closely with a wide range of collaborators across the fusion landscape, including those focused on magnetic as well as inertial fusion.” LeChien is also the coinventor of the impedance-matched Marx generator (IMG) that the company’s power plant concept relies on.
Please read Part 2 next