Raphael Thys
Futuristic Nuclear Fusion Particles Simulation
- Fusion power is the “holy grail” of clean energy, leveraging the physics that plays out at the center of the sun.
- A fusion energy startup called Helion Energy signed an agreement with Microsoft this week, promising to provide the tech company with fusion power within 5 years.
- The announcement is seen as immensely ambitious, as many experts believe viable fusion energy is still decades away.
Talk to most scientists about the future of nuclear fusion, and they’ll tell you that the idea of a world powered by the physics of the Sun is still a ways out. Experts believe we have a good grasp of the physics, but engineers still lack the materials necessary to withstand temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius for extended lengths of time—something that will be necessary for commercial reactors to be feasible.
So it’s surprising that Microsoft—along with fusion startup Helion Energy—announced last week that the company planned to be powered by nuclear fusion energy within five years.
“This collaboration represents a significant milestone for Helion and the fusion industry as a whole,” Helion CEO David Kirtley told TechCrunch. “We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”
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“A lot of work to do” is a bit of an understatement. One expert, speaking with the tech website The Verge, described the announcement as “the most audacious thing I’ve ever heard.”
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Helion Energy does have a few things going for it. It was the first private company able to achieve 100 degrees Celsius in its test reactor (a fusion reactor would need to be even hotter than that to work optimally), and in 2021, it secured $2.2 billion in funding. The startup’s reactor will be small by nuclear standards, but will output about 50 megawatts—more than the 42 MW produced by the U.S.’s first two offshore wind farms.
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Helion’s reactor also doesn’t follow the decades-old design outlined by fusion scientists called a tokamak. Instead, Helion Energy uses a 40-foot device called a plasma accelerator, heating deuterium (a hydrogen isotope) and helium-3. Once heated, pulsed magnetic fields create fusion and, hopefully, produce more energy than Helion puts in. The company has built six prototypes over the course of a decade to test its system, and a seventh is scheduled to go online in 2024.
Microsoft and Helion Energy didn’t announce the money or specifics of the deal, though Kirtley told The Verge that failure to deliver on the fusion project comes with big financial penalties. “We’ve committed to be able to build a system and sell it commercially to [Microsoft],” he said.
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With a tagline like “First to Fusion,” it makes sense that Helion Energy would need to make some big moves to make its clean energy promise a reality—but this move is a big one (with some serious “cart before the horse” vibes). For example, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is the multi-billion dollar tokamak megaproject aimed at achieving fusion on Earth, and it won’t achieve first plasma until 2025. Its successor, called the DEMOnstration Power Plant (DEMO) and billed as essentially a full fusion reactor prototype, likely won’t start pumping out energy until 2050.
Maybe Helion Energy’s small scale approach and novel fusion design can achieve breakthroughs currently impossible by large scale projects. But the company now has only five years to figure it out—and the clock starts now.