Towards a Viable Fusion Reactor

­A startup that just announced a $900 million Series A round of funding is discussing the tech behind its proposed fusion reactor, the first of its kind and the Holy Grail of energy.

Or…that’s the promise, at least. For years, everyone with a soapbox has been standing atop it and spreading the good word – producing and harnessing the same nuclear fusion reactions found in A-bombs and the sun (an “unlimited” energy source) could solve most of humanity’s problems.

That’s if it’s possible in a viable and cost-effective way. Thus far, only the National Ignition Facility, a Department of Energy research program, has demonstrated that a controlled fusion reaction could release a net output of energy.

In the case of the National Ignition Facility, they used a process called inertial confinement, which, as explained by the DOE, is where “Laboratories use high power lasers or electrical discharges, to compress hydrogen fuel to very high densities for billionths of a second.”

Of course, that process is neither cheap nor suitable for commercial deployment.

By contrast, our intrepid startup, Pacific Fusion, plans to rely on “pulsed magnetic fusion,” which uses large electrical current pulses to generate enormous magnetic fields to compress and heat the fusion fuel.

Pacific Fusion is laying out their technical roadmap, wherein they’re promising something that almost seems too good to be true.

“We lay out the details of the system that’s going to let us get 100x the gain of what the [National Ignition Facility] can do at about one-tenth the cost,” said Will Regan, co-founder and president of Pacific Fusion.

The next step for the company – to further their project and unlock the next portion of the $900 million funding – is building complete pulse module, or IMG.