General Fusion Group Ltd. a leading fusion company, has achieved a historic compressional plasma heating result with its large-scale Lawson Machine 26 (“LM26”) demonstration. Using Magnetised Target Fusion (“MTF”), the Company reached electron temperatures exceeding 12 million degrees Celsius – more than 1 keV. The results were co-published by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (“UKAEA”), the UK’s national fusion laboratory, and measured using gold-standard Thomson scattering methods.
Only a few fusion companies have surpassed the industry-recognised milestone of 1 keV, all using other fusion approaches. This world-first result for General Fusion’s MTF approach marks a measurable step forward for the Company in its aim to deliver baseload, economical clean power from fusion energy.
The 1.1 keV electron heating (12.6 million degrees Celsius) result was measured just prior to peak compression and is detailed in a technical paper co-authored by UKAEA that is being concurrently posted on General Fusion’s website and submitted for peer review.
Scientific Progress
As a technology, General Fusion’s MTF aims to achieve fusion in a practical and economical way, using a liquid metal wall which enables the use of existing materials and, ultimately, durable machines. It also allows the Company’s design to avoid superconducting magnets and high-powered lasers. The approach is designed to solve significant long-standing barriers to commercialising fusion energy at a time when electricity demand is surging, and nations around the world are racing to bring fusion power to the grid.
General Fusion’s LM26 programme is designed to reach key technical milestones on the path to a first-of-a-kind fusion plant in the next decade. LM26 is the first fusion machine in the world to achieve 1 keV with low-speed compression. Using MTF, the Company heats magnetically confined plasma through compression in milliseconds as compared to other types of plasma compression technologies in microseconds or nanoseconds. In LM26, this compression is achieved with a solid metal wall, rather than high-powered lasers or other methods operating in physical extremes. Achieving 1 keV through practical, low speed compression is unique to General Fusion and is a key step toward its ultimate commercial approach.
https://www.ukaea.org/
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