New Zealand company moves closer to unlimited fusion energy

A New Zealand company is trying to recreate the energy of a star on Earth, using a new type of fusion reactor.

In a warehouse in New Zealand's capital Wellington, a startup is trying to recreate the energy of a star on Earth, using a new type of fusion reactor.

What is fusion energy?

The company's goal is to produce nuclear fusion, a form of virtually limitless clean energy created by the exact opposite reaction to the world's current nuclear power.

That means instead of splitting atoms, nuclear fusion combines them together in the same way the Sun does. This creates a powerful burst of energy that can be achieved using the most abundant element in the universe: hydrogen.

OpenStar Technologies' nuclear fusion reactor in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo: OpenStar Technologies).

Earlier this month, OpenStar Technologies announced that it had created superheated plasma at temperatures of around 300,000 degrees Celsius — a major step on the road to producing fusion energy.

'The first plasma was a really important moment,' says Ratu Mataira, founder and CEO of OpenStar, because it was a milestone that showed the company's system was working.

It took the company two years and about $10 million to achieve this, he added, with the goal of making fusion energy technology cheaper and faster.

OpenStar is one of a handful of startups pushing research and development into fusion energy, with the goal of commercializing the energy source, even if it has yet to be fully proven.

Fusion energy companies have attracted more than $7.1 billion in funding, according to the Fusion Industries Association. But experts warn that the road ahead is still long and challenging.

Fusion – the same process that powers the Sun and other stars – is often called the 'holy grail' of clean energy: it is virtually limitless, does not pollute the environment and does not produce dangerous radioactive waste like fission reactions in today's nuclear power plants.

This is a quantum leap forward in tackling the escalating climate crisis. It can provide reliable and continuous energy without the need to build a lot of new infrastructure. This means we can switch to clean energy without disrupting our current way of life.

However, generating fusion energy on Earth is an extremely large challenge.

New fusion technology

The most common technology involves a reactor known collectively as a tokamak, which is charged with two forms of hydrogen gas – deuterium, which is readily found in seawater, and tritium extracted from lithium.

The temperature inside a tokamak reaches 150 million degrees, 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun. Under these extreme temperatures, hydrogen isotopes collide with each other in the plasma, causing them to fuse and create a huge source of energy.

The tokamak's magnetic coils help keep the plasma from touching the walls of the device.

OpenStar's technology, however, is the opposite. Instead of having plasma inside a magnet, it has a magnet inside a plasma.

An animation of the inside of OpenStar's reactor. (Photo: OpenStar Technologies).

Its reactor has a powerful magnet suspended inside a vacuum chamber about 16 feet wide. This arrangement is inspired by natural phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field.

Physicist Akira Hasegawa came up with the concept in the 1980s, based on his research on plasma around Jupiter. The first machine to apply these principles was built at MIT, in collaboration with Columbia University, and went into operation in 2004, but was shut down in 2011.

'The advantage of this reactor is the ability to quickly iterate and improve performance very quickly ,' Mataira said. Compared to a tokamak, OpenStar's technology is simpler and easier to repair if something goes wrong.

OpenStar has raised $12 million and is preparing for a larger funding round, aiming to build two more prototypes in the next 2-4 years.

Fusion energy is becoming increasingly feasible

OpenStar is just one of many fusion startups that have emerged in the past five years. Countries like China, the United States, and South Korea are also pushing ahead with research and construction of fusion reactors, all with some success.

The Korea Advanced Superconducting Tokamak Research Facility (KSTAR), known as the "artificial sun" , at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy. (Photo: AFP).

'This field is growing so rapidly that private investors are willing to invest to accelerate the research and development of this technology,' said Professor Gerald Navratil from Columbia University.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which leads the way with tokamak technology, has raised more than $2 billion. Meanwhile, other companies like OpenStar and Zap Energy are pursuing more unique approaches. Zap Energy is focused on developing a compact, scalable reactor that uses electrical pulses to create plasma.

Companies in the space are offering answers to the question 'When will fusion energy be ready?'. OpenStar predicts six years. Commonwealth Fusion says early 2030. Zap Energy answers similarly.

However, the UK Atomic Energy Authority says that commercialisation of fusion energy will not be possible until the second half of this century, due to significant scientific and technical challenges.

Navratil shares that startups sometimes tend to 'overstate what they can do' . Moving from theory to practice, especially building a safe and reliable energy system, is an incredibly complex process.

Still, Mataira believes the race to develop fusion energy will create a vibrant competitive environment where companies learn from each other and work together to accelerate progress.