Nuclear Fusion: Clean Energy Startups Around the World
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Calling them startups, or if you prefer young companies, is an understatement and perhaps misleading. Often born more than twenty years ago, these are companies that have already raised hundreds of millions of euros in funding and are engaged in a field, that of nuclear fusion, where you don’t take your first steps in a garage. The Fusion Industry Association claims that at least 33 different companies are pursuing this next-generation nuclear power plant and expects to actually arrive at the supply of energy by 2030. Collectively they raised at least $2.8 billion this year, bringing total private sector investment to $4.8 billionwith a 139% increase in funding compared to 2021.
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The US announcement on nuclear fusion: “A turning point but it will take 30 years for it to become a reality”
edited by Jaime D’Alessandro
A moment of grace or, as they have defined it in the USA, a “Kitty Hawk moment”, referring to the small town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright brothers made history with their first powered airplane flight in 1903. And the experiment of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Llnl), a research laboratory of the Department of Energy of the United States of America managed by the University of California, seems to confirm it. “The private sector is fundamental,” explained the US energy secretary Jennifer M. Granholm during the presentation of the results of the Llnl experiment. “Public research institutes can take steps, but it is clear that such a revolution needs the presence of private companies.”
France, United States And Great Britain, China, Japan, Canada they seem to be the countries in which the most focus is placed on this technology. Leaving aside those who work on other forms of nuclear power, such as the Italian one NewCleo which raised 400 million from financiers such as Exor, overseas companies that already have a significant specific weight there are four: Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Tae Technologies, Helion and Zap Energy. The first, an offshoot of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and in which they have also invested Eni, Google, Bill Gates and George Sorosshould have over one billion and 800 million dollars in cash.
It follows Tae Technologies, with around one billion and 200 million in funding also from Google, as well as Chevron, Kuwait and the Japanese Sumitomo Group. In Helion, which obtained half a billion dollars, they bet among the others Sam Altman, currently head of Open Ai, and Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, of the controversial Palantir and known for its conservative and libertarian positions. Behind of Zap Energycan count on 200 million dollars in financing, we find Chevron together with Shell.
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Another step towards nuclear fusion. New energy record from the European experiment
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Google to Tae Technologies, in addition to the investment, has provided its artificial intelligence. Tea’s device, called C2W “Norman” from the name of the founder, the physicist Norman Rostoker who died in 2014, is a thirty-metre long stick and therefore different from other donut-shaped reactors. The web giant’s Ai are used to keep the process under control and, by learning, to improve it so as to increase efficiency. Here too the goal is to arrive at a market-ready reactor within the next eight years.
Further north, in Canada, the General Fusion has attracted the attention of Jeff Bezos, the “father” of Amazon and Tobias Lütke, head of Shopify. Antagonists in the field of electronic commerce, they find themselves side by side in supporting this company which has raised 400 million overall. “Commercialization of fusion energy is within reach and General Fusion is poised to deliver it by 2030,” he said a few hours ago Greg Twinney, who leads the Canadian company. It is clear that it is now a race against time, also to grab more investments.
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Jeff Bezos focuses on nuclear fusion and finances a plant in England
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The other realities that are participating in this tender seem to be further behind, as well as having funds that number in the tens of millions and no longer in the hundreds. The British First Light And Tokamak Energy for example, the American Phoenix or the Japanese Helical fusion. Unlike the more important ones mentioned at the beginning, which all have over twenty years of history behind them, this one was born last year. However, it is backed by a multinational company of the caliber of Sony. “Many investors in Japan are hesitant to invest money in this area because fusion energy is still under development,” the chief executive lamented Takaya Taguchi. Something that does not happen in the United States and Europe where, on the contrary, it is increasingly believed that the new generation of nuclear power is within reach.
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