- Fusion Startup Xcimer Raises $100M, Plans Laser Prototype
- DOE Posts a Roadmap for Fusion Commercialization
- Commonwealth Fusion Systems Signs $15 Million DOE Agreement
- Kyoto Fusioneering & CNL Form JV To Develop Fusion Fuel Cycle Systems
- OpenAI Looks to Fusion Developer Helion for Power
- Energy Secretary Tells Data Centers ‘Bring Your Own Power’
Fusion Startup Xcimer Raises $100M, Plans Laser Prototype
Pitchbook has a profile of Hedosophia’s leading investment strategy. It reports that Hedosophia’s role in the Xcimer round is a “rare glimpse into the firm’s willingness to invest in deep-tech startups, which tend to be much more capital-intensive and require significant research and development to gain revenue traction, compared to lighter-touch software companies.”
According to Pitchbook, the fundraising process benefited from having climate-specialist investors and came together in around nine months, according to Conner Galloway, CEO and chief science officer at Xcimer. (MIT profile of Galloway)
“Some of our investors have a long time horizon and are specifically interested in deep-tech climate change technologies with a 10 to 20 year investment horizon,” Galloway told Pitchbook, adding that “some of the ultra-high-net-worth LPs at these firms care about climate” and are a driving force behind more climate-tech bets.
Xcimer will use the fresh capital from its all-equity raise to hire an additional 70 people and establish a new prototype laser facility in Denver, according to Xcimer’s president and CTO Alexander Valys. Pitchbook noted that the two men first met as roommates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Xcimer has hired a senior vice president of engineering, Giovanni Greco, who will lead the company’s engineering efforts beginning with the design, development, and manufacturing of the prototype laser system.
The startup is developing an internial confirment fusion reactor, based on high-power laser technologies originally developed for the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative programs in the 1980s. This follows a $2.5 million Seed round in 2022 and a $9 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program
The company’s stated goal is to extend the proven science of inertial fusion to an industrial scale by developing the world’s highest-energy laser system and combining it with key technologies and innovations from multiple fields.
Xcimer has says its development will come in three major phases:
- Phase One: A prototype laser system in the Denver facility within the next two years
- Phase Two: A full-scale engineering breakeven demonstration facility at some point after the first phase
- Phase Three: A fusion pilot plant within ten years
In 2023, Xcimer was selected for a $9 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. Xcimer is also involved in the DOE’s three inertial fusion energy hubs in the Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR) initiative, consisting of public and private organizations and government research labs.
Projects funded by the new Inertial Fusion Energy Science and Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR) program will “bring together expertise and capabilities across DOE’s national laboratories, academia, and industry to advance IFE system components.” The ANS Newswire has an indepth report on the hubs, how they are organized, and their expected results.
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DOE Posts a Roadmap for Fusion Commercialization
(WNN contributed to the report) The Department of Energy (DOE) has released a strategy aimed at accelerating the development of commercial fusion energy in partnership with the private sector. The department also announced $180 million to support fusion research. (Executive summary – PDF file)
In March 2022, the US government announced the US Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy and launched a department-wide initiative to develop a strategy for accelerating the viability of commercial fusion energy in partnership with the private sector.
The newly released DOE Fusion Energy Strategy 2024 is organized around three pillars:
- closing the science and technology gaps to a commercially relevant fusion pilot plant;
- preparing the path to sustainable, equitable commercial fusion deployment; and
- building and leveraging external partnerships.
In support of DOE’s fusion energy strategy, the department has also announced a $180 million funding opportunity for Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives. These collaboratives are aimed at supporting the further creation of a fusion innovation ecosystem.
It will work by forming teams that will have a collective goal of bridging the Department’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program’s foundational and enabling science research with the needs of the growing fusion industry, including the technology roadmaps of the awardees of the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.
It said these collaboratives are envisioned as “dynamic hubs of innovation” to help bolster US-based manufacturing and supply chains, driving advancements in fusion energy research in collaboration with both public and private entities.
The FIRE Collaboratives Funding Opportunity Announcement, sponsored by the FES program within the DOE’s Office of Science, is open to accredited US colleges and universities, national laboratories, non-profit organizations, and private companies.
The DOE has also made a number of other announcements in moving toward implementation in support of the US Bold Decadal Vision. It has released a new FES vision entitled Building Bridges, through which FES will develop a national fusion science and technology (S&T) roadmap “to address the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of closing critical S&T gaps to commercially relevant fusion pilot plants.” The new “roadmap” would be complete in 2025.
The department has also announced that all eight selected firms signed agreements to be participants in the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. It is designed to promote private investments into fusion commercialization and helps companies resolve critical-path scientific, technological, and commercialization challenges on the path toward a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion energy.
In addition, DOE released a Request for Information on a proposed Fusion Energy Public-Private Consortium Framework (PPCF). The PPCF will function as a complement the Milestone Program and FIRE Collaboratives by bringing together state/local government, private, philanthropic funding, as well as new partnerships, to accelerate fusion commercialization.
“With today’s announcements, DOE has shown once again that we are ambitiously implementing our US Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy,” said DOE Deputy Secretary David Turk.
“We will leverage the opportunities enabled by our world-leading public and private fusion leadership, including humanity’s first-ever demonstration of fusion ignition at our National Ignition Facility as well as major new advances in technologies such as high-temperature superconductors, advanced materials, and artificial intelligence to accelerate fusion energy. The development of fusion energy as a clean, safe, abundant energy source has become a global race, and the US will stay in the lead.”
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Commonwealth Fusion Systems Signs $15 Million DOE Agreement
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy worth $15 million to meet research and development goals leading to commercial fusion power. The funding is part of the first phase of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.
CFS was among eight fusion companies DOE selected in 2023 to receive a total of $46 million through the Milestone program. The program is a key element in support of the Administration’s Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy and the Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. DOE Deputy Secretary David Turk announced the CFS agreement signing at an event marking the second anniversary of the Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.
At the event, CFS Chief Executive and Co-Founder Bob Mumgaard joined Turk and Justina Gallegos, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, along with other fusion company executives, researchers, and Biden Administration officials.
“The Milestone program is a key tool to accelerate the fusion industry’s growth from research projects to operating power plants. Its incentives can help us keep moving step by step toward our goal of building our first fusion power plant by the early 2030s.”
The program is similar to NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which pioneered the milestone-based approach that successfully led the U.S. private spaceflight industry to rebuild the country’s manned spaceflight abilities. Because pre-agreed funding amounts are released only when companies reach their pre-agreed milestones, it means taxpayers don’t have to bear any technical and financial risks. Companies also must invest some of their own money into the Milestone work.
The Milestone program is paired with another recently announced program called the Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) collaboratives, which is designed to help universities and National Labs investigate technology that is key to fusion commercialization. Fusion company partners will also cooperate in these collaborations. FIRE and Milestone are intended to work together to advance fusion science and enable fusion power deployment.
“After decades of primarily supporting only scientific projects, federal fusion funding priorities now also include the practical needs of a new industry that will disrupt the way we think about and use energy,” Mumgaard said. “I can’t emphasize enough how important that broader mindset is to the fight against climate change.”
At its Massachusetts headquarters, CFS is building a machine called SPARC that will use powerful electromagnets to heat up and squeeze a plasma of hydrogen ions until fusion occurs. CFS will finish SPARC assembly and commissioning by the end of 2025. The first plasma is expected in 2026. CFS claims SPARC will pave the way to the company’s first power plant, ARC, which is expected to deliver power to the grid in the early 2030s.
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Kyoto Fusioneering & CNL Form JV To Develop Fusion Fuel Cycle
(NucNet) Kyoto Fusioneering, a privately owned fusion energy startup based in Japan, has formed a joint venture company with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) to support the development of deuterium-tritium fusion fuel cycle technologies.
The new company, Fusion Fuel Cycles, will focus on engineering and delivering large-scale fuel cycle systems for global fusion development programs. The development follows a September 2023 alliance between Kyoto Fusioneering and CNL.
The initial project under the latest collaboration is Unity-2, a fuel cycle test facility at CNL’s Chalk River Laboratories. Unity-2, which is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2025 and operational by mid-2026, will aim to demonstrate the entire deuterium-tritium fuel cycle from fuel discharge to purification and supply. The facility is designed to pioneer efficient tritium processing technology that could be used in a fusion pilot plant, CNL said.
Unity-2 is the first in what could be a series of projects aimed at supporting experimental and power plant-scale fusion machines worldwide, according to CNL.
Founded in 2019, Kyoto Fusioneering specializes in developing advanced technologies for commercial fusion power plants such as gyrotron systems, tritium fuel cycle technologies,and breeding blankets for tritium production and power generation. CNL is Canada’s foremost nuclear science and technology organization.
In 2022, Kyoto Fusioneering said it had completed preliminary design for its Unity (Unique Integrated Testing Facility) project, integrating several facilities dedicated to advancing engineering technologies critical for fusion energy commercialization. The test facility, now named Unity-1, would be built in Japan but would not use any radioactive materials or achieve any fusion reaction.
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OpenAI Looks to Fusion Developer Helion for Power
OpenAI is reportedly looking to buy nuclear fusion energy from Helion to power its data centers. According to a recent report in Geekwire, the ChatGPT maker is in talks to buy “vast quantities” of energy from the startup, which is chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who has personally invested $375 million in Helion. Geekwire based its report on an exclusive article published in the Wall Street Journal. (firewall).
The Helion fusion design at this stage is projected to produce 50 MW of electrical power, which is the same power rating as the NuScale small modular reactor (SMR), a nuclear fission device based on light water reactor design principles.
Altman said in a statement last February at the Davos conference that new energy technologies such as nuclear fusion will be required to provide power for AI infrastructure, e.g., data centers, needed for advanced systems. Current designs for the large data centers being built to support AI are expected to require up to 1,000 MW of power or the complete output of a large conventional light water fission nuclear reactor.
So far, what Helion has in common with every other fusion developer on the planet, is that it has yet to develop a process that enables it to capture more power than it puts in and maintain that excess power generation for more than a few seconds.
Helion claims it will have a nuclear fusion powerplant online by 2028. It plans to use Helium 3, a rare type of the gas used in quantum computing, to fuel its reaction, marking it out as different from other companies developing processes based on hydrogen isotope tritium.
It is developing a 40-foot plasma accelerator that heats fuel to 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit). It heats deuterium and helium-3 into a plasma and then uses pulsed magnetic fields to compress the plasma until fusion happens.
Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, signed a power purchase agreement with Helion last year, the first of its kind relating to nuclear fusion. Under the deal, Helion will supply Microsoft with up to 50MW of clean power.
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Energy Secretary Tells Data Centers ‘Bring Your Own Power’
Reuters reports DOE Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is worried about the demand for power from data centers supporting artificial intelligence. She said she is talking with AI companies about building small modular reactors (SMRs).
In other words, don’t push for coal-fired power plants to stay open to power AI data centers as that that would complicate the Biden administration’s decarbonization goals relative to climate change.
Granholm has good reason to be worried about this issue. Reuters noted that the Electric Power Research Institute said in a report last week data centers could use up to 9% of total electricity generated in the U.S. by the end of the decade, more than doubling their current consumption.
“We’ve been talking with data companies. The large ones have commitments to net-zero and would like to see clean baseload power,” Granholm said in an interview with Reuters.
She said the administration had discussed the possibility that companies could band together to make use of small modular reactors for nuclear energy, and could simultaneously place orders to reduce costs.
While the Energy Secretary used government speak to voice her concerns, the meaning behind them is a clear – there is no such thing as a free lunch. If data centers want “vast quantities” of power, as called for by energy investor Sam Altman, they need to fund and build their own and not assume the government or current utilities are going to do that for them.
“If the tech companies are coming in and are going to pull clean power from the grid, they should bring the power with them,” she said.
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