Understanding Nuclear Fusion Science & Technology

Nuclear fusion promises a future with a limitless, carbon-free and reliable source of power that advances the human civilization. Inertial fusion energy (IFE) as a clean source of power for the future has been regaining attention since National Ignition Facility's net-energy gain breakthrough. Since 2024, more than $900 million has been directed toward fusion technologies, with a total of $7.1 billion since 1992. 

NIF’s groundbreaking result was very expensive to achieve, took decades of development, and doesn’t produce enough energy gain for commercial operation. Many obstacles remain to scale this result for commercial use, including the cost of the laser. Each of NIF’s beamlines uses a series of precision glass optical elements to generate, control and precisely direct light towards the target. Because glass can only handle a certain amount of laser energy without being damaged, NIF must spread 2 megajoules of laser energy over 192 independent beamlines, at a significant expense.

We learnt how Xcimer is solving some of these challenges in scaling fusion, by replacing the hundreds of glass mirrors with gas optics, using larger targets efficiently contained in a molten salt cooled chamber, and constructing a 10+ MJ laser for higher power yields. It relies on heating a small fuel pellet, made of deuterium and tritium, and uses pulsed power to achieve rapid compression, creating a shockwave that initiates the reaction. These enable high temperatures and pressures that reach over 5 million degrees F and 1000 million bar. Learning this science guided our approach to position Xcimer with an edge in the inertial fusion space, and to show how its technology and configuration might be the most cost-effective option among all other fusion approaches.