OpenStar
OpenStar performs nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion company has taken a new step forward in the attempt to commercialize clean energy: the creation of the first plasma.
In Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, a start-up company is trying to recreate the power of a star on Earthusing an unconventional “inside-out” reactor with a powerful floating magnet at its core.
The goal is to produce nuclear fusion, an almost unlimited form of clean energy generated by the exact opposite reaction to that of current global nuclear energy. Instead of splitting atoms, nuclear fusion seeks to fuse themresulting in a powerful explosion of energy that can be obtained using the most abundant element in the universe: hydrogen.
Two years and nine million dollars (a reduced price for investigations of this type) then, a new step was taken: the creation of the first superheated plasma at temperatures of about 300,000 degrees Celsius.
The first plasma is a very important moment,” he told Queen Mother, founder and executive director of OpenStarthe company responsible for the discovery, “is the moment when you know that everything works efficiently.”
Fusion, which recreates the same process that makes the sun and other stars shine, is often considered the Holy Grail of energy clean, as CNN calls it: it is almost unlimited, does not produce pollution that heats the planet and does not have the problem of radioactive waste in the long term that fission, the nuclear technology that the world currently uses, has.
The most commonly used technology for nuclear fusion uses a donut-shaped machine called a tokamakwhich is powered by two forms of hydrogen gas — deuterium, found in seawater, and tritium extracted from lithium.
The temperature inside the tokamak reaches 150 million degrees, 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun. Under this extraordinary heat, hydrogen isotopes crush together within a plasma, causing them to fuse in a process that generates enormous amounts of energy.
The strong magnetic coils in the tokamak confine the plasma, a task OpenStar scientists describe as “keep jello together using rubber bands“.
When might nuclear fusion be ready for commercialization? OpenStar says that within six years. Commonwealth Fusion says it can deliver fusion power to the grid early in the 2030s.
Gerald Navratil, professor of fusion energy and plasma physics at Columbia University, told CNN that at this point, “the maturity of the field of nuclear fusion is such that now the private venture capital investors are willing to invest money to see if they can get to fusion a little faster.”
Maitara is optimistic: “Not all merger companies will be successfulOpenStar may be one of them,” he said, “but we as a society will learn more quickly.”
