Latest news with #Wendelstein7-X
Scientific American
03-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Record-Breaking Results Bring Fusion Power Closer to Reality
A twisting ribbon of hydrogen gas, many times hotter than the surface of the sun, has given scientists a tentative glimpse of the future of controlled nuclear fusion —a so-far theoretical source of relatively 'clean' and abundant energy that would be effectively fueled by seawater. The ribbon was a plasma inside Germany's Wendelstein 7-X, an advanced fusion reactor that set a record last May by magnetically 'bottling up' the superheated plasma for a whopping 43 seconds. That's many times longer than the device had achieved before. It's often joked that fusion is only 30 years away—and always will be. But the latest results indicate that scientists and engineers are finally gaining on that prediction. 'I think it's probably now about 15 to 20 years [away],' says University of Cambridge nuclear engineer Tony Roulstone, who wasn't involved in the Wendelstein experiments. 'The superconducting magnets [that the researchers are using to contain the plasma] are making the difference.' On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. And the latest Wendelstein result, while promising, has now been countered by British researchers. They say the large Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor near Oxford, England, achieved even longer containment times of up to 60 seconds in final experiments before its retirement in December 2023. These results have been kept quiet until now but are due to be published in a scientific journal soon. According to a press release from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, the as yet unpublished data make the Wendelstein and JET reactors 'joint leaders' in the scientific quest to continually operate a fusion reactor at extremely high temperatures. Even so, the press release notes that JET's plasma volume was three times larger than that of the Wendelstein reactor, which would have given JET an advantage—a not-so-subtle insinuation that, all other things being equal, the German project should be considered the true leader. This friendly rivalry highlights a long-standing competition between devices called stellarators, such as the Wendelstein 7-X, and others called tokamaks, such as JET. Both use different approaches to achieve a promising form of nuclear fusion called magnetic confinement, which aims to ignite a fusion reaction in a plasma of the neutron-heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The latest results come after the successful fusion ignition in 2022 at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) near San Francisco, which used a very different method of fusion called inertial confinement. Researchers there applied giant lasers to a pea-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium, triggering a fusion reaction that gave off more energy than it consumed. (Replications of the experiment have since yielded even more energy.) The U.S. Department of Energy began constructing the NIF in the late 1990s, with the goal to develop inertial confinement as an alternative to testing thermonuclear bombs, and research for the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal still makes up most of the facility's work. But the ignition was an important milestone on the path toward controlled nuclear fusion—a 'holy grail' of science and engineering. 'The 2022 achievement of fusion ignition marks the first time humans have been able to demonstrate a controlled self-sustained burning fusion reaction in the laboratory—akin to lighting a match and that turning into a bonfire,' says plasma physicist Tammy Ma of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which operates the NIF. 'With every other fusion attempt prior, the lit match had fizzled.' The inertial confinement method used by the NIF—the largest and most powerful laser system in the world—may not be best suited for generating electricity, however (although it seems unparalleled for simulating thermonuclear bombs). The ignition in the fuel pellet did give off more energy than put into it by the NIF's 192 giant lasers. But the lasers themselves took more than 12 hours to charge before the experiment and consumed roughly 100 times the energy released by the fusing pellet. In contrast, calculations suggest a fusion power plant would have to ignite about 10 fuel pellets every second, continuously, for 24 hours a day to deliver utility-scale service. That's an immense engineering challenge but one accepted by several inertial fusion energy startups, such as Marvel Fusion in Germany; other start-ups, such as Xcimer Energy in the U.S., meanwhile, propose using a similar system to ignite just one fuel pellet every two seconds. Ma admits that the NIF approach faces difficulties, but she points out it's still the only fusion method on Earth to have demonstrated a net energy gain: 'Fusion energy, and particularly the inertial confinement approach to fusion, has huge potential, and it is imperative that we pursue it,' she says. Instead of igniting fuel pellets with lasers, most fusion power projects—like the Wendelstein 7-X and the JET reactor—have chosen a different path to nuclear fusion. Some of the most sophisticated, such as the giant ITER project being built in France, are tokamaks. These devices were first invented in the former Soviet Union and get their name from a Russian acronym for the doughnut-shaped rings of plasma they contain. They work by inducing a powerful electric current inside the superheated plasma doughnut to make it more magnetic and prevent it from striking and damaging the walls of the reactor chamber—the main challenge for the technology. The Wendelstein 7-X reactor, however, is a stellarator—it uses a related, albeit more complicated, design that doesn't induce an electric current in the plasma but instead tries to control it with powerful external magnets alone. The result is that the plasmas in stellarators are more stable within their magnetic bottles. Reactors like the Wendelstein 7-X aim to operate for a longer period of time than tokamaks can without damaging the reactor chamber. The Wendelstein researchers plan to soon exceed a minute and eventually to run the reactor continuously for more than half an hour. 'There's really nothing in the way to make it longer,' explains physicist Thomas Klinger, who leads the project at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. 'And then we are in an area where nobody has ever been before.' The overlooked results from the JET reactor reinforce the magnetic confinement approach, although it's still not certain if tokamaks or stellarators will be the ultimate winner in the race for controlled nuclear fusion. Plasma physicist Robert Wolf, who heads the optimization of the Wendelstein reactor, thinks future fusion reactors might somehow combine the stability of stellarators with the relative simplicity of tokamaks, but it's not clear how: 'From a scientific view, it is still a bit early to say.' Several private companies have joined the fusion race. One of the most advanced projects is from the Canadian firm General Fusion, which is based near Vancouver in British Columbia. The company hopes its unorthodox fusion reactor, which uses a hybrid technology called magnetized target fusion, or MTF, will be the first to feed electric power to the grid by the 'early to mid-2030s,' according to its chief strategy officer Megan Wilson. 'MTF is the fusion equivalent of a diesel engine: practical, durable and cost-effective,' she says. University of California, San Diego, nuclear engineer George Tynan says private money is flooding the field: 'The private sector is now putting in much more money than governments, so that might change things," he says. 'In these 'hard tech' problems, like space travel and so on, the private sector seems to be more willing to take more risk.' Tynan also cites Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off that plans to build a fusion power plant called ARC in Virginia. The proposed ARC reactor is a type of compact tokamak that intends to start producing up to 400 megawatts of electricity—enough to power about 150,000 homes—in the 'early 2030s,' according to a MIT News article. Roulstone thinks the superconducting electromagnets increasingly used in magnetic confinement reactors will prove to be a key technology. Such magnets are cooled with liquid helium to a few degrees above absolute zero so that they have no electrical resistance. The magnetic fields they create in that state are many times more powerful than those created by regular electromagnets, so they give researchers greater control over superheated hydrogen plasmas. In contrast, Roulstone fears the NIF's laser approach to fusion may be too complicated: 'I am a skeptic about whether inertial confinement will work,' he says. Tynan, too, is cautious about inertial confinement fusion, although he recognizes that NIF's fusion ignition was a scientific breakthrough: 'it demonstrates that one can produce net energy gain from a fusion reaction.' He sees 'viable physics' in both the magnet and laser approaches to nuclear fusion but warns that both ideas still face many years of experimentation and testing before they can be used to generate electricity. 'Both approaches still have significant engineering challenges,' Tynan says. 'I think it is plausible that both can work, but they both have a long way to go.'
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists achieve 'world first' by heating plasma to multimillion degree temperatures: 'Helping to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos'
A research team in Germany recently achieved what it called "a world first in fusion research," exciting the clean energy community, Interesting Engineering reported. The research team is part of the world's largest stellarator facility, Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), where scientists have been hard at work developing a more efficient way to generate fusion energy. And now, they've finally achieved their goal, generating high-energy helium-3 ions for the first time. Nuclear fusion is the process of using force to merge two atomic nuclei. The act of combining these nuclei results in a tremendous release of energy, which provides a great deal of power that can be used for everything from fuel alternatives to electricity on a commercial scale. Fusion is a clean and naturally occurring means of energy generation; in fact, it's the primary type of power and reaction that creates the stars. And it doesn't generate polluting emissions the way other fuel sources do, appealing to climate advocates. Therefore, the more we can scale our usage of fusion, the cleaner and less overheated our planet's atmosphere will be. For fusion to happen, the process must be made more efficient. Fusion occurs inside a superheated plasma, which is kept at multimillion-degree temperatures. Traditionally, this fusion results in high-energy "alpha particles" (helium-4 nuclei), but those particles can be prone to escape, which can cool the plasma and halt the entire process. That's why the team focused on generating smaller, lower-energy particles, which could maintain the fusion process in a more manageable way. They did this using ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH). As Interesting Engineering explained, ICRH entails sending electromagnetic waves into plasma at "the specific frequency at which helium-3 ions naturally orbit around the magnetic field lines" in order to help the particles absorb energy. "This is similar to pushing a child on a swing: to be effective, each push must be precisely in tune with the swing's natural frequency — in other words, it must be in resonance," the scientists wrote in their press release. "This is the first time that high-energy helium-3 ions have been produced in a stellarator using ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH): a world first in fusion research." Researchers highlighted how the findings will also help them better understand how the sun works, as these same resonance processes used at W7-X may occur in nature. "These findings show that fusion science is not only shaping the future, but also helping to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos around us," the press release concluded. Should we be pouring money into nuclear fusion technology? Yes — it'll pay off It's worth exploring Not from our tax dollars No — it's a waste Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
German fusion energy firm Proxima Fusion secures $150m financing
European fusion energy company Proxima Fusion has closed a €130m ($150m) Series A financing round, bringing its total funding to more than €185m in private and public capital. The Series A round, the largest private fusion investment in Europe to date, was jointly led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital, with substantial contributions from a consortium of investors including UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, Elaia Partners, Visionaries Tomorrow and redalpine. redalpine led Proxima Fusion's seed round in 2024, just one year earlier. Proxima Fusion CEO and co-founder Francesco Sciortino stated: "Fusion has become a real, strategic opportunity to shift global energy dependence from natural resources to technological leadership. Proxima is perfectly positioned to harness that momentum by uniting a spectacular engineering and manufacturing team with world-leading research institutions, accelerating the path toward bringing the first European fusion power plant online in the next decade." This influx of capital bolsters Proxima's mission to pioneer commercial fusion energy, a move supported by the European Union and national governments including Germany, the UK, France and Italy, who view fusion as critical for achieving energy independence and sustainable economic growth. Cherry Ventures founding partner Filip Dames stated: 'We back founders solving humanity's hardest problems — and few are bigger than clean, limitless energy." "Proxima Fusion combines Europe's scientific edge with commercial ambition, turning world-class research into one of the most promising fusion ventures globally. This is deep tech at its best, and a bold signal that Europe can lead on the world stage.' Established in April 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), Proxima Fusion maintains a strong public-private partnership with IPP. The company's approach to engineering is driven by simulations, utilising advanced computing and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) technologies. These strategies build upon the IPP's Wendelstein 7-X stellarator experiment's results. In early 2025 Proxima Fusion, alongside IPP, KIT and other partners, unveiled Stellaris — a stellarator concept that integrates physics, engineering and maintenance. The fresh investment will enable Proxima Fusion to complete its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) by 2027, a crucial step in validating HTS technology for stellarators and promoting European HTS innovation. The company is finalising the location for Alpha, its demonstration stellarator, and is in discussions with several European governments. Alpha, expected to commence operations in 2031, will be pivotal for demonstrating net energy gain (Q>1) and advancing towards the first-of-its-kind fusion power plant. Proxima Fusion is also expanding its team, which currently exceeds 80 members, across three locations: its Munich headquarters, the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich and the Culham fusion campus near Oxford. "German fusion energy firm Proxima Fusion secures $150m financing" was originally created and published by Power Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Business Wire
11-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Proxima Fusion Raises €130M Series A to Build World's First Stellarator-Based Fusion Power Plant in the 2030S
MUNICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Proxima Fusion, Europe's fastest-growing fusion energy company, today announced the close of its €130 million ($150 million) Series A financing — the largest private fusion investment round in Europe. The Series A financing was co-led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital. Significant participation also came from UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF), Plural, Leitmotif, Lightspeed, Bayern Kapital, HTGF, Club degli Investitori, Omnes Capital, Elaia Partners, Visionaries Tomorrow, Wilbe and redalpine, the latter of which led Proxima Fusion's seed round just one year ago. This brings Proxima Fusion's total funding to more than €185 million ($200 million) in private and public capital, accelerating its mission to build the world's first commercial fusion power plant based on a stellarator design. Francesco Sciortino, CEO and Co-founder of Proxima Fusion, said: "Fusion has become a real, strategic opportunity to shift global energy dependence from natural resources to technological leadership. Proxima is perfectly positioned to harness that momentum by uniting a spectacular engineering and manufacturing team with world-leading research institutions, accelerating the path toward bringing the first European fusion power plant online in the next decade." Shifting global energy dependence Proxima was founded in April 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), with which it continues to work closely in a public-private partnership to lead Europe into a new era of clean energy. The EU, as well as national governments including Germany, UK, France and Italy, increasingly recognize fusion as a generational technology essential for energy sovereignty, industrial competitiveness, and carbon-neutral economic growth. By building on Europe's long-standing public fusion investment and industrial supply chains, Proxima Fusion is laying the groundwork for a new high-tech energy industry—one that transforms the continent from a leader in fusion research to a global powerhouse in fusion deployment. 'We back founders solving humanity's hardest problems — and few are bigger than clean, limitless energy," said Filip Dames, Cherry Ventures Founding Partner."Proxima Fusion combines Europe's scientific edge with commercial ambition, turning world-class research into one of the most promising fusion ventures globally. This is deep tech at its best, and a bold signal that Europe can lead on the world stage.' Proxima is taking a simulation-driven approach to engineering that leverages advanced computing and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) technology to build on the groundbreaking results of the IPP's Wendelstein 7-X stellarator experiment. Just earlier this year, together with the IPP, KIT and other partners, Proxima unveiled Stellaris. As the first peer-reviewed stellarator concept to integrate physics, engineering, and maintenance considerations from the outset, Stellaris has been widely recognized as a major breakthrough for the fusion industry, advancing the case for quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators as the most promising pathway to a commercial fusion power plant. Daniel Waterhouse, Partner at Balderton Capital, said:"Stellarators aren't just the most technologically viable approach to fusion energy—they're the power plants of the future, capable of leading Europe into a new era of clean energy. Proxima has firmly secured its position as the leading European contender in the global race to commercial fusion. We are thrilled to partner with Proxima's game-changing team of engineers, alongside Europe's top manufacturers, to build a company that will be transformational for Europe." With this new funding, the company will complete its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) in 2027, a major hardware demonstration that will de-risk high-temperature superconductor (HTS) technology for stellarators and stimulate European HTS innovation. Proxima will also finalize a site for Alpha, its demonstration stellarator, for which it is in talks with several European governments already. Alpha is scheduled to begin operations in 2031, and is the key step to demonstrating Q>1 (net energy gain) and moving towards a first-of-a-kind fusion power plant. The company will continue to grow its 80+-strong team across three offices: at the headquarters in Munich, at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich (Switzerland), and at the Culham fusion campus near Oxford (UK). ' Fusion energy is entering a new era—moving from lab-based science to industrial-scale engineering, ' said Dr. Francesco Sciortino. 'This investment validates our approach and gives us the resources to deliver hardware that is essential to make clean fusion power a reality.' Ian Hogarth, Partner at Plural said: 'Proxima Fusion exemplifies a new kind of European ambition - a full force effort to develop the world's first fusion power plant. Since their first round of funding two years ago, Francesco and the team have hit extremely challenging milestones ahead of schedule and hired a team that spans plasma physics, advanced magnet design and computer simulation. Their peer-reviewed stellarator power plant design concept confirms that fusion really can be commercially viable, and creates an opportunity for Europe to be first to the target.' About Proxima Fusion Proxima Fusion spun out of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in 2023 to build fusion power plants using QI-HTS stellarators. Proxima has since assembled a world-class team of engineers, scientists and operators from leading companies and institutions, such as the IPP, MIT, Harvard, SpaceX, Tesla, and McLaren. By taking a simulation-driven approach to engineering that leverages advanced computing and high-temperature superconductors to build on the groundbreaking results of the IPP's W7-X stellarator, Proxima is leading Europe into a new era of clean energy, for good.
NDTV
07-06-2025
- Science
- NDTV
Scientists Smash Nuclear Fusion Record, Igniting Hope For Limitless Clean Energy
Scientists in Germany have taken a giant leap towards producing near-limitless, clean energy using nuclear fusion -- the same fiery reaction that takes place in the core of the Sun. Using the Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion reactor, the researchers managed to sustain the fusion experiment for an impressive 43 seconds, smashing the previous records, according to a report in LiveScience. Developing nuclear fusion for energy requirements has long been a goal of scientists but reaching temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius and sustaining its long-term operation has always proved a challenge. Moreover, current reactor concepts consume more energy than they are able to produce. However, using the machine with extremely low-density and electrically charged hydrogen gas as fuel, scientists managed to achieve the breakthrough. Wendelstein 7-X, officially called a 'stellarator', is a type of fusion device that confines hot, charged gas, known as plasma, with powerful external magnets controlling it. On May 22, plasma inside Wendelstein 7-X was raised to over 20 million Celsius, reaching a peak of 30 million Celsius. It also reached a new record high triple product, a key metric for the success of fusion power generators. The triple product is a combination of the density of particles in the plasma, the temperature required for these particles to fuse, and the energy confinement time. "The new record is a tremendous achievement by the international team. Elevating the triple product to tokamak levels during long plasma pulses marks another important milestone on the way toward a power-plant-capable stellarator," said Thomas Klinger, Head of Operations at Wendelstein 7-X. Notably, the highest values for the triple product were achieved by the Japanese Tokamak JT60U (decommissioned in 2008) and the European Tokamak facility JET in Great Britain (decommissioned in 2023). Holy grail Scientists regard nuclear fusion as the holy grail of energy. It is what powers our Sun as atomic nuclei are merged to create massive amounts of energy, which is the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, where the heavy atom is split into multiple smaller ones. Last year, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion energy reactor, dubbed China's 'artificial sun', sustained plasma for a whopping 1,000 seconds, breaking the 403-second record it set in 2023. Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material. By mimicking the natural reaction of the sun, scientists are hoping that the technology may help harness near-unlimited amounts of energy and help battle the energy crisis, as well as power humanity's exploration beyond the solar system
