Poway’s General Atomics (GA) recently got a big financial boost from the state to bring fusion energy a step closer to reality.
The company was awarded a $20 million tax credit to build a blanket component testing facility at its Magnet Technologies Center in Poway.
It’s called a blanket because the component surrounds the fusion core and “absorbs the energy from the fusion reaction and converges that energy into steam turbines, heat and electricity,” said Brian Grierson, GA’s director of fusion energy technologies.
It’s an important component in fusion nuclear reactors. Once built, the facility will be the only one of its kind in the world capable of testing large-scale components.
That’s critical because small, unnoticeable flaws in laboratory models could become major issues once they are scaled up.
“So, that way, all the operations of the equipment are properly presented,” Grierson said.
Normally, a facility of this size and scope would take around 20 years to build, GA will be able to complete it within three to five years. That’s because the company reused the facility that built the giant super conductor magnet for the international fusion plant called ITER, formerly the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
“A lot of the equipment and materials are already here on site,” Grierson said. “This would have taken a decade or longer if we had to start it from scratch.”
The goal is to enable national laboratories, academic institutions and private companies to test various design options for the fusion blanket.
The facility is expected to bring more than 40,000 jobs to San Diego and pump more than $125 billion into California’s economy over the next decade.
It will also bring commercial fusion energy one step closer to reality. It’s clean energy that produces no nuclear waste.
Currently, nuclear power plants use fission technology to produce electricity by splitting large atoms, such as uranium. That process creates radioactive waste.
Fusion, however, generates energy by joining two light atoms together, such as hydrogen. It’s the same process that powers the sun and the byproduct is helium.
While the long-running joke in the industry is that fusion energy is always 30 years away, Grierson said that’s a matter of resources rather than time.
“With the new resources that are being invested into fusion development, as well as the global competition to bring fusion to the grid,” he said. “I think that those investments and those resources are really accelerating the timeline for fusion to become a commercial reality.”
That reality is already starting to happen. China is investing heavily in fusion energy, with five fusion facilities under construction. In the United States, Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Virginia is in the process of bringing its fusion power plant online. That is expected around the early 2030s, the company said.
