Novatron Fusion Group features in leading Scandinavian technical magazine
Novatron Fusion Group recently welcomed one of Scandinavia’s leading technical magazines, Teknisk Ukeblad (TU), for a guided tour of our facilities at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Editor Tormod Haugstad has since published an extensive article in TU detailing the story behind the NOVATRON concept, our unique approach to fusion, plus the roadmap for 2025 and beyond.
Read on for some key excerpts from the feature:
SWEDEN’S NOVATRON FUSION GROUP IS DEVELOPING FUSION ENERGY
There is a race going on in the world to create emission-free fusion power that can solve the world's need for climate-friendly energy. Swedish company Novatron Fusion Group has developed a technology that can prove to be the most efficient and cheapest. In the Alfvén building at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) it is busy. Scientists, civil engineers, mechanics and operators work to prepare the fusion reactor Novatron 1, or N1 as it is called.
From the new year, the company Novatron Fusion Group will run tests to reproduce the energy of the sun in this first version of a machine for plasma experiments. During pulses of just one second, the researchers must achieve extremely hot plasma.
In the last two years, the company has employed some of the world's leading researchers. Countless experiments have been conducted in a smaller version of the reactor to test technology, sensors, control systems and equipment that can withstand heating up to one million degrees Celsius.
The NOVATRON concept differs from the two most well-known concepts for fusion energy, ie stellarator and tokamak. Both reactor types were developed to stabilize plasma that rotates around in a donut shape with the help of magnets.
“So far, everything indicates that our concept will succeed. Our technology is more effective and cheaper,” says Peter Roos, CEO at Novatron.
THE INVENTOR
The researcher who is credited with Novatron's technology is today's CTO, Jan Jäderberg. The civil engineer in mechanical engineering from KTH struggled as a fresh graduate to find a relevant job during the financial crisis in the early 1990s, but got a solid job in a company that produced electromagnets for industry. Magnetism became almost an obsession for Jäderberg, who in the 2000s joined M2 Engineering, which developed and produced reflective coatings for CDs and DVDs. Jäderberg's specialty was magnetrons - he led the development of an industrial plasma method, sputtering, to apply very thin layers of metal to, among other things, thin-film solar cells.
“To achieve the highest goal of uniformity, I needed to find a method to control the plasma. In this work, I discovered the potential of using a similar technique to control fusion plasma,” explains Jäderberg.
He had started his own company, TC Tech, based on other ideas and patents. It was almost 20 years before he took leave in 2019 to develop his ideas about fusion plasma.
“For two months I focused exclusively on calculating the magnetic field on which the Novatron reactor is based. When I finally managed to create the field shape that gives plasma stability, I couldn't get rid of the thought,” he says.
Jäderberg made contact with fusion plasma physicist and professor Jan Scheffel, who is now also employed by the company. Scheffel knew the professor emeritus T. Kenneth Fowler, who is considered one of the world's foremost researchers in mirror machines and who has headed the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California. He was able to present his concept to Fowler and waited anxiously for the answer.
”After a few weeks, the reply came from Ken and it read like this: ‘The concept will work!’ With that statement, I got my colleague and current chairman of Novatron, Erik Odén, to commit fully.”
CUTTING COSTS IN HALF
Novatron's concept allows plasma to oscillate between two magnetic mirrors when heated to more than 100 million degrees Celsius. The company believes that the capital costs can be halved compared to the tokamak concept. But the technology is also largely based on the work that was carried out over several decades at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, where the world's most extensive development of mirror machines took place.
Peter Roos says that his role is to lead Novatron through a longer test phase until industrialization. He has worked with innovation in several technology companies.
“When Erik contacted me to tell me about an invention, I immediately understood that this was important. I couldn't sleep that night and was never in doubt about saying yes to the job. At the same time, fusion power is one of the most difficult things to work with. There are so many details that requires different experts. Our role is mostly about providing the best framework conditions to drive the research forward.
USA vs CHINA
Roos thinks it is good that around 45 companies are now competing to realize fusion energy. American CFS is the best-known project. They have invested the most, hired the most and say they want to be up and running by 2040. But Helion Energy has also come a long way. They work closely with Open AI founder Sam Altman and Microsoft, which has signed the first ever contract for the supply of electricity from Helion's fusion power plant in 2028.
Novatron Fusion Group has an agreement on cooperation with Great Britain's Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Over 2,700 people work with fusion energy in England, most of them in connection with the JET reactor in Culham. The research here is done in collaboration with the ITER project in France.
“We experience great interest in working at Novatron. We have hired researchers in the US, Japan, Germany and, not least, Ukraine, who have a lot of expertise after previously leading Russia's nuclear power program. Together with KTH, we have established a Nordic center for fusion energy because we believe the Nordic countries should cooperate on
realize a disruptive technology that wants to solve the world's need for climate-friendly energy,” says Peter Roos.
INVESTMENT
KTH's holding company has so much faith in Novatron's possibilities for success that the university has made its first investment in a company that does not originate from their own research. The other owners are EIT InnoEnergy, which is part-financed by the EU to contribute to sustainable energy, Industrifonden, Granitor, Santander Climate Tech Fund and Climentum Capital.
The first reactor, N1, cost between 160-170 million kroner, but the company is in full swing planning the construction of the next generation, N2. It is estimated to cost approximately 500 million in the first pilot version, but 1.5-2 billion to fully complete. The company hopes that N2 will provide proof of concept in 2028. N3 will be a full-scale pilot reactor and N4 a commercial fusion power plant.
“It's a lot of money, but we do this much cheaper than everyone else. CFS has spent around 200 billion kroner on its project so far,” says Roos.
