Canada's General Fusion has reached a milestone by forming a magnetized plasma on its new Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), clearing the way for its next big test on the road to sustainable power.
Fusion — the process of harvesting the energy when two nuclei in a plasma combine to form a new atom — continues to be a mostly theoretical endeavor, but research in the sector has already gathered $7 billion in investments in 2024, according to ABI Research.
The announcement by General Fusion has kicked off a 93-week push to prove the viability of its unique, steampunk-style approach with LM26, as reported by TechCrunch.
Many projects use lasers to superheat a fuel of deuterium and tritium into a plasma in hopes of triggering a fusion reaction.
The LM26, as the report explained, relies on steam-powered pistons to drive a wall of lithium inward to compress the plasma, raising temperatures to the point where a reaction can begin. This method is called magnetized target fusion (MTF).
Research in using MTF and piston-based compression began in the 1970s at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. The lack of precise control proved detrimental to the process, as the company shared, but it believes that modern computers with real-time data tracking may be able to solve that problem.
The fuels needed for fusion are Earth-abundant, and the process is carbon-free, making it the perfect complement to solar and wind on our quest to a more sustainable energy future.
Deuterium is found in seawater, with enough of a supply to last millions of years, while tritium can be generated from lithium and mined from the Earth's crust, as Fusion for Energy explained.
Just 132 pounds of this efficient fuel provides the same amount of energy as over 275,000 tons of petroleum, providing a route away from dirty fuels.
The next step for the LM26 is to implement the MTF portion of the fusion project, although there's still some work to be done, as the TechCrunch report noted.
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Absolutely 💯 The company's plan is to use a liquid lithium wall for compression, but researchers are currently relying on solid lithium compressed by electromagnets, according to the report. This limits test runs, since it's much more difficult to reset, but it made progress with over 1,000 tests on a liquid wall prototype.
"We are doing what we do best — nimbly advancing our transformative technology and getting real results that matter," Greg Twinney, CEO of General Fusion, shared in a press release.
"Unlike other approaches, MTF is designed from the ground up to produce practical power. As a result, our path to delivering clean fusion energy to homes and businesses following LM26 is more straightforward and streamlined than other technologies."
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