What is
fusion power?
The world needs
more clean energy
The world´s increasing demand and dependency on energy is enormous.
We need clean, reliable and affordable energy to fuel the global all-electric transformation, without releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The sun, and every other star, are powerful fusion reactors.
What is fusion?
Fusion is the process by which stars generate their energy. It’s nature’s default choice for a powerplant. In the tremendous heat and gravity at the core of these stellar bodies, nuclei of light elements collide, fuse into heavier nuclei and and release tremendous amounts of energy.Our closest star, the sun, is a perfect example of a powerful atomic fusion process. Every second the sun converts about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium and about 4 million tons of matter into energy.
The fusion process is so powerful because the matter is converted into energy based on the world’s most famous formula; E = mc². This means that even a very tiny amount of matter can be converted into enormous amounts of energy.
What is plasma?
Fusion occurs in a superheated state of matter called plasma with unique properties distinct from solids, liquids and gases.Just as a liquid will boil and change into gas, heating matter to extreme temperatures will separate the atom’s electrons from the nuclei and create a mixture of free positively charged particles (ions) and negatively charged particles (electrons) – which we call plasma. Plasma is actually the most common state of matter in the universe. 99% of the visible matter in the universe is in the form of plasma.
Good examples of plasma here on earth are the lightning bolts we see during thunderstorms. For a brief instant, the electric discharge heats the air as it travels through the atmosphere and creates a plasma trail. Another good example is neon signs, where a gas is also turned into a plasma by an electric discharge.
Neon is a noble gas that glows when placed in an electric field.
What are the fuels
used in fusion?
Applicable fuels have primarily focused on isotopes of hydrogen and helium, like deuterium (one proton and one neutron) and tritium (one proton and two neutrons).Deuterium is plentiful on earth, and can be extracted from common sea water. A glass of heavy water, where the regular hydrogen is substituted for deuterium, contains enough deuterium to supply energy for a person’s entire life. Tritium on the other hand, is more scarce but can be produced from lithium within a fusion reactor.
Helium-3 (two protons and one neutron) is a more exotic fuel that barely exists on Earth but can be found extra-terrestrially on the Moon and several other galactic bodies. It can also be created artificially by bombarding lithium with neutrons in a nuclear reactor, but it remains very expensive.
There are other fuel combinations as well, and each combination has a unique energy output together with its advantages and drawbacks. A large field of fusion research is focused on optimizing and solving problems related to various fuel combinations.
The deuterium in a glass of heavy water is enough to cover a person’s energy needs for an entire lifetime.
Fusion on earth
To create continuous fusion power on earth, three essential things are required; the ability to heat the plasma to the extreme temperatures needed, a high enough plasma density and a confinement mechanism to keep the plasma in place over time.Heating plasma
There are several ways to heat a plasma to fusion temperatures. One way is to use powerful lasers. With focused, high-energy laser beams, it’s possible to create the extreme temperatures required, upwards of over 100 million degrees.
Another method is to heat the plasma using radio waves, like a massively powerful microwave oven. Yet another method relies on accelerating neutral atoms to great speeds and shooting them into the plasma. Most reactor designs will need multiple methods to reach the extreme temperatures needed.
Eventually, when the fusion reaction starts and runs stably, it is possible to use energy released in the fusion reaction to heat the plasma directly, called a burning plasma.
The NOVATRON design makes it comparatively easy to keep the plasma burning without relying fully on complicated external heating devices.
Plasma density and confinement
We don’t have the massive gravitational field of a star here on earth to compress and keep the plasma in place, so instead we use strong magnetic fields. Since the particles in the plasma are electrically charged, they can be repelled or attracted by magnetic forces.
Why is fusion power
so difficult?
Simulating the processes of the sun here on earth is not trivial. In addition to the hundred million degrees needed, you also need to continuously add heated plasma fuel to the hearth and at the same time remove by-products. The hot plasma must be stably confined and the generated heat shall be extracted.Many fusion power concepts have aspects of the process that makes running continuously hard or impossible. It might be the add-and-remove processes for fuel and byproducts, or a need to ramp currents to induce magnetic fields to stabilize the magnetic confinement.
Stable confinement of the plasma with magnetic fields is perhaps the hardest problem to solve. If the magnetic field isn’t inherently self-stabilizing, any minute instabilities in the plasma will tend to grow and make the plasma escape in fractions of a second.
When fusion process is running, the energy released in the process needs to be absorbed and turned into heat to drive electric generators. The walls of the reactor will need very advanced materials and designs to be able to cope with the power generated, a problem common to all fusion reactor concepts.
Once those challenges are solved, fusion has to be made commercially viable, i.e. it has to produce electricity at a competitive price.
Is fusion the solution
to the energy crisis?
Fusion power has the potential to provide an abundant supply of clean, reliable and affordable energy for future generations during thousands of years to come. It will help us to provide energy for humanity together with wind, hydro and solar power and put an end to the world's fossil fuel dependency and the climate crisis.
Is it safe?
Yes. The hard part is keeping the fusion reaction alive, not stopping it from running away. Even a burning plasma requires continuous heat input and will stop within fractions of a second if isn’t actively kept running with external power. If there are any disturbances to the process the plasma will just fizzle and die. At any time the total amount of fuel in the reactor is only one or a few grams of deuterium gas, not the multiple tons of glowing hot radioactive poisonous heavy metals as in a fission power plant.
The fusion process does not produce any long-lived radioactive as with traditional nuclear fission power plants. Some parts of the reactor will become somewhat radioactive through the life cycle of the reactor, but the time scale of waste management will be around 100 years instead of 100,000 years as with fission reactors.
Though both fission and fusion produce energy using atoms, one by splitting atomic nuclei and the other by joining them, they are vastly different in terms of risk levels.
When will steady-state continuous fusion power be made possible?
The NOVATRON™ challenges the current limitations in fusion power engineering and provides the solution needed to complete decades of research and experiments.The NOVATRON design's ultimate goal is to enable steady-state continuous fusion with high reliability, through a new magnetic field configuration and geometry.
It will simplify fusion power engineering and lower the capital cost when compared to other fusion power concepts. Economics is a key factor in the commercialisation of fusion power.
An artist’s 3D rendering of the innovative NOVATRON reactor design.
How does the NOVATRON™ differ from other approaches?
The NOVATRON magnetic configuration and reactor design, discovered by the Swedish inventor and entrepreneur Jan Jäderberg, is based on a new insight into the elusive fusion plasma containment problem. We are convinced that it will solve the problem of efficient plasma containment that has challenged us for decades.
Where are we in the innovation cycle?
The NOVATRON™ project utilizes state-of-the-art technology and research in collaboration with world-leading plasma-physics, magnetics, mechanical design, physical modelling and computer simulation expertise.We are now commissioning our first experimental reactor design to verify the core of the technology. In addition, we have performed extensive computer verification and stress-test simulations to confirm that the NOVATRON will perform as expected in real-world conditions.
The NOVATRON fusion concept will be developed in four steps, with the final goal being a commercial fusion power plant design, ready to provide power to the energy grid.