By Yuka Obayashi
Japanese start-up Helical Fusion said on Monday it has completed a critical performance test of a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil, marking a major milestone toward realising commercial nuclear fusion energy.
Nuclear fusion involves smashing atoms together at super-high temperatures to generate heat the same way the sun does, and could one day produce enormous amounts of clean power with little radioactive waste, in contrast to today’s fission reactors.
Despite global efforts to harness fusion energy, 70 years of research have yet to yield a commercially viable reactor.
Helical Fusion said the successful test of its HTS coil, a core component of commercial fusion reactors, replicated the magnetic environment inside a fusion device and achieved a stable current flow under superconducting conditions, in a world first.
The result paves the way for the company to manufacture and construct its integrated demonstration device, Helix HARUKA, designed to prove the feasibility of stable and continuous fusion reactions.
“This means that the possibility of achieving fusion power generation ahead of the rest of the world has been demonstrated,” Helical Fusion CEO Takaya Taguchi said at a news conference.
As the sole inheritor of the helical fusion technology developed by the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), the company is developing the Helical Stellarator and aims to make it the worldʼs first commercially viable fusion power plant based on this design by the 2030s.
Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has expressed strong support for the nuclear fusion industry, which has raised expectations within the country’s fledgling sector of expanded government backing.
While the United States and China have invested over one trillion yen ($6.6 billion) over the past five years to accelerate fusion research and development, Japan’s spending amounted to only about 100 billion yen, according to Taguchi.
“We hope the Takaichi administration will bridge the gap with the U.S. and China, or even overtake them, through increased funding and policy support,” Taguchi said.
Global fusion energy investment grew by $2.64 billion in the year since last July, according to an industry group, but companies said much more capital is needed to take the industry commercial.
Helical Fusion said out of 50 fusion projects around the world, it aims to be the world’s first to meet all three of the key requirements for commercial viability – produce stable power, generate more energy than it consumes, and show the ability to run regular component maintenance.
In the U.S., Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans what it calls the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Virginia, to generate power by the early 2030s.
($1 = 150.7800 yen)
AloJapan.com