Stellarator: Proxima Fusion plans to build a fusion power plant by 2031
Proxima Fusion presents a concept for a commercial nuclear fusion power plant. The Munich-based company plans to build a demonstration plant by 2031.
Stellarator reactor chamber of the Wendelstein 7-X: complex magnetic field generated by irregularly shaped magnetic coils
(Image: Anja Ullmann/MPI for Plasma Physics)
Nuclear fusion seems to be making progress: in recent weeks, two research facilities have broken records. The Munich-based start-up Proxima Fusion is even presenting the concept for a commercial reactor. A prototype should be ready for use in a few years.
Like the two research facilities in China and France that have reported records, Proxima Fusion is also relying on fusion using magnetic confinement, albeit with a different reactor chamber design: instead of a tokamak like those facilities, the Munich-based company wants to build a stellarator like the Wendelstein 7-X research facility at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald.
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In magnetic confinement fusion, plasma heated to 100 million degrees is held in a magnetic field cage in a torus-shaped reactor chamber. Only at such temperatures is it possible to overcome the repulsion of two positively charged hydrogen atomic nuclei and fuse them into a helium nucleus.
The stellarator requires complex-shaped magnets
The advantage of the stellarator is that it can run in continuous operation - only pulsed operation is possible in the tokamak. To do this, a stellarator needs a complex magnetic field: it is ring-shaped and twisted. To generate this, the magnetic coils must be irregularly shaped. The Wendelstein 7-X could only be realized when a supercomputer was available that could calculate what the magnetic field cage must look like and how the coils must be shaped.
Stellaris is the name of the concept presented by Proxima Fusion in the journal Fusion Engineering and Design. It is based on the Wendelstein 7-X and uses advances in the field of high-temperature superconducting magnets (HTS), among other things. These magnets generate a stronger field so that they can be smaller. This in turn should enable a considerable reduction in size compared to previous stellarator concepts.
Stellaris has been reviewed by experts
"Stellaris is the first peer-reviewed concept for a fusion power plant that is designed to operate reliably and continuously without the instabilities and disturbances that occur with tokamaks and other approaches", says Francesco Sciortino, CEO and one of the founders of Proxima Fusion. This paves the way for commercial fusion power plants.
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Proxima Fusion was founded in 2023. It is the first spin-off of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). The company has ambitious plans: by 2031, it wants to build a demonstrator that can generate net energy – something that no fusion research facility has yet achieved. The first fusion power plant should then be generating electricity in the 2030s.‍
(wpl)
