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Geek Wire
6 days ago
- Politics
- Geek Wire
‘We're definitely on the back foot': U.S. risks losing fusion energy race to China, industry leaders warn
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Zap Energy's FuZE-Q fusion device. (Zap Photo) REDMOND, Wash. — The race to lead in artificial intelligence isn't the only event in which the U.S. and China are competing for dominance. The pursuit of fusion — the 'Holy Grail' of clean energy — is also pitting the superpowers against each other, and American tech leaders worry China could surge ahead. At a Technology Alliance conference on Tuesday, Washington state companies building commercial fusion technologies raised concerns about China's strategy to pour resources into fusion. 'The U.S. is not committed to fusion. China is, by orders of magnitude,' said Ben Levitt, the head of R&D for Zap Energy, speaking on a fusion panel at the Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase. While the U.S. government spent approximately $800 million a year on fusion efforts during the Biden administration, China is investing more than twice that annually, IEEE Spectrum and others report. The Trump administration has taken action supporting nuclear fission, which powers today's nuclear reactors, but has not shown the same interest in fusion. The sector has become increasingly reliant on venture capital to fund its progress. China is also focused on training fusion physicists and engineers, while President Trump is slashing funding for scientific research. Fusion is so highly sought after given its potential to provide nearly limitless, carbon-free power, which could be critical to meet growing energy demands from AI applications and the global push to decarbonize transportation, the electrical grid, heating and cooling, industrial applications and elsewhere. 'The U.S. started with a very good hand in fusion and has played it extremely poorly,' Levitt said. 'So, yeah, we're definitely on the back foot.' The conference panel also included Brian Riordan, co-founder and chief operating officer of Avalanche Energy, and Anthony Pancotti, co-founder and head of R&D for Helion Energy. Riordan argued that while China appears to be making strides in the race, what matters even more is who develops the most affordable technology. A fusion energy panel at the Technology Alliance's Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase, from left: Anthony Pancotti from Helion Energy, Brian Riordan from Avalanche Energy, Ben Levitt from Zap Energy and moderator Lisa Stiffler from GeekWire. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Physicists for decades have pursued fusion energy. But replicating the reactions that power the Sun and stars is massively challenging and requires technologies that can generate super high pressure and temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius, and sustain those conditions — plus efficiently capture the energy that fusion produces. In December 2022, the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hit a key milestone in fusion research, demonstrating that fusion reactions here on Earth could release more power than required to produce them. Images published in January revealed that China appears to be building a fusion research facility modeled on NIF — but even larger. Others suggest the site could be a giant Z-pinch machine — similar to the technology being pursued by Zap. Years ago, a Chinese website posted a graphic of a fusion device that bore a troubling resemblance to Helion's technology, the company has said. 'We have seen copycats in China already, and it is terrifying,' Pancotti said on Tuesday. 'They can mobilize people and money at a scale that is beyond even what venture capital can do in this country. And so I think there's real concern there, and there's real concern around supply chain, too.' Added Levitt: 'I wouldn't be surprised if every single one of our [fusion] concepts has a city designated to it in China.'
Geek Wire
6 days ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
Sparks fly: Seattle-area fusion startup rivals debate path to commercial power
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE A fusion energy panel at the Technology Alliance's Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase, from left: Anthony Pancotti from Helion Energy, Brian Riordan from Avalanche Energy, Ben Levitt from Zap Energy and moderator Lisa Stiffler from GeekWire. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) The conversation got a little heated at a Seattle-area conference Tuesday when three companies vying to commercialize fusion power took the stage. The Pacific Northwest is a hub for fusion innovation, and Washington is home to Helion Energy, Zap Energy and Avalanche Energy, among others. It's a small and generally collegial cluster, but representatives from the trio of companies took some swipes at each other at the Technology Alliance event as they laid out their ambitions for commercial success. With more than $1 billion from investors, Helion has set the most aggressive timelines for deploying its technology. The Everett company aims to build and operate what could be the world's first fusion power plant — a 50-megawatt facility whose electricity is earmarked for Microsoft and is supposed to come online in 2028. 'We're focused on producing electricity and breaking down all of the barriers to make that happen in this decade,' said Anthony Pancotti, co-founder and head of R&D for Helion. Ben Levitt, the head of R&D for Zap, said the field is progressing and fusion is definitely coming — but on stage at the Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase, he questioned Helion's target. 'I don't see a commercial application in the next few years happening,' Levitt said. 'There is a lot of complicated science and engineering still to be discovered and to be applied.' Fusion, which powers the sun and the stars, requires super hot, super high-pressure conditions sustained over time. The goal for the companies is to engineer a technology that generates and captures more energy from smashing atoms together than is needed to produce the reactions — a target known as 'Q greater than 1.' Later this decade and into the next, 'you'll see small scale, not necessarily profitable fusion,' Levitt predicted. 'But you will see fusion demonstrations with greater output energy than input.' Helion is currently testing its Polaris reactor, a seventh-generation prototype that will be the same size as the planned commercial reactor. The sector is attracting interest from tech companies desperate for clean energy for their power-hungry data centers. Zap, which is located in Everett a short distance from Helion, hasn't set an expected date for the commercialization of its technology. The company is experimenting with its FuZE-Q fusion device and has built its Century system, a prototype including components beyond the reactor that will be needed to generate power for the grid. For Brian Riordan, co-founder and chief operating officer of Seattle's Avalanche, the question comes down to economics. 'Ultimately, I don't think the first [company] to 'Q greater than 1' is going to matter,' he said. 'What's going to matter is who can make it economical. The first car company in the U.S. was like Duryea Power Wagon Corp. or something, and nobody remembers because they didn't make it cheap enough.' (Riordan was close — it was Duryea Motor Wagon Company.) Avalanche is aiming for Q equals 1, a lower bar to clear, within about two years, Riordan said, but that would be in a prototype, not a commercial device. In 2022, Avalanche won a Pentagon contract from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop a fusion device called the Orbitron for space propulsion and power generation. Its reactor system is among the compact — smaller than one of the event's conference tables, Riordan said. While the debate over timing and targets will be settled in coming years, the three panelists agreed that the most important thing is someone cracks the fusion challenge and unlocks this potentially vast source of clean energy. 'Good luck to everybody,' Levitt said. 'If fusion wins, we're all winners. We want to be the first, of course. But you know, any winner is a winner for humanity.'
