Edward White and Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai SEPTEMBER 8 2024
A Shanghai start-up is seeking to raise $500mn to develop cheaper next- generation nuclear fusion technology, as China races with the west to crack the problem of commercialising the groundbreaking clean energy.
Nuclear fusion — where hydrogen isotopes fuse after being heated to extreme temperatures, releasing energy — has for decades held the potential to provide bountiful emissions-free electricity with no long-lived radioactive nuclear waste.
Energy Singularity, founded in 2021, has been developing a small-scale tokamak, a machine expected to be at the heart of fusion power plants.
The Chinese start-up is one of at least 45 companies in around 13 countries working to commercialise nuclear fusion, using diverse technological approaches and fuel sources, according to the US-based Fusion Industry Association.
However, the technology is still nascent and experts say there is still no guarantee fusion power plants will be realised. Many machines developed to date have barely generated enough energy to boil a kettle.
Ye Yuming, Energy Singularity’s chief operating officer and co-founder, said the company’s approach had been inspired by work being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
The US engineers there have been developing a small-scale tokamak using high- temperature superconducting (HTS) material to encase a plasma of the isotopes heated to temperatures hotter than the sun.
https://www.ft.com/content/bf012cd9-1624-49c1-8352-5a91fb4d9a21?mc_cid=3437527730&mc_eid=9913f721d7
