Reducing risks to commercial fusion

Malcolm Handley, Strong Atomics

Who am I?

The fusion fund

Strong Atomics

Why?

• Climate change + energy for everyone

• Renewables and storage aren’t enough

• Something needs to power the CCS equipment

• Fusion is underinvested

How do we get to fusion?

• Select an approach

• Science: breakeven, reactor-relevant gain

• Engineering: working reactor

• Market: competitiveness

Reducing cost, risk, time

Approach

Approach

Ryan Umstattd, ARPA-E

Approach: Portfolio, TRLs

• NASA uses a portfolio of approaches for high risk projects

• Fusion needs a portfolio too

• Strong Atomics does this

Approach

Science

• Breakeven and reactor-relevant gain must be possible

• Must also be small, fast and cheap

• Pick conservatively or fail fast/cheaply

Science

• Engaged dispassionate feedback

• Science board

Science: Shared softwareHard:

• Proliferation of codes

• Classified codes

• Licensing

• Revenue model

• Shortage of software expertise

Helps with:

• Selecting approaches

• Peer review

• Interpreting experimental results

• Credibility with investors

• Portfolio management

Science: Shared diagnosticsHard:

• Challenging to share equipment

Helps with:

• Expense

• Interpreting experimental results

• Credibility

Science: Shared pulsed powerHard:

• Everyone wants something slightly different

• Hard to share

• Where do you put it?

Helps with:

• Cost (30-50% for some projects)

Science: How do we share?

Science: RollupHard:

• Lack of competition

• Not everyone wants to join

• Lots to argue about

• Need to move people

• Disruption when setting up

Helps with

• Everyone in one place

• Shared teams for power, software, diagnostics, etc

• Shared management, fund-raising, etc

Science: Holding companyBut:

• Enough companies to share software?

• Enough similarities so share hardware?

Helps with

• Centralize software

• Maybe centralize other aspects

• Can invest in anything

• Competition between approaches

Engineering

• Lots of challenges: tritium, neutrons, high current, etc

• Impossible to fail fast here

• Pick carefully or pray

Market

• Metrics: LCOE (c/kWh), Total OCC ($)

• Targets: 5 c/kWh, $500M?

• What are you selling (not just base-load electricity)?

• Load following? Sell heat? Heat storage?

Market: Avoid fission’s costs

Strong AtomicsRequests:

• Standardize and share more

• Double-check pricing assumptions

• Find more promising approaches

Postion:

• Fusion is possible and promising

• Portfolio (can’t pick a winner yet)

• Science board (pick potential winners)

• Open to facilitating sharing

Malcolm Handley, m@redheron.com