Its hot fusion reactor may sound sci-fi, but General Fusion has backing from the public and private sectors

Curt Cherewayko

To see the inspiration for General Fusion Inc.’s technology, look up in the sky. While it’s not on nearly as large a scale, the Burnaby startup is developing an energy reactor using the same hot fusion reaction that powers the sun.

In doing so, the company is attempting to overcome seemingly impossible technological hurdles, while distancing itself from cold fusion, a technology that to date has only been realized in sci-fi novels and movies.

“Credibility is the biggest issue with a company like this,” said Doug Richardson, General Fusion’s CEO.

Nonetheless, the company has attracted some significant backers, including venture capital firms Chrysalix Energy and GrowthWorks Capital Ltd. and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

“If [hot fusion] can be made to work commercially, there’s no question that it will change the world,” said Volker. “There’s always that chance that somebody with a crazy and different idea can excel and make that idea work.”

General Fusion is at the tail-end of its first major financing, a US$9 million round led by a U.S. venture capital firm expected to close this summer. When it does, the company will be able to access $4.2 million of a $13.9 million investment it has been awarded by Sustainable Development Technology Canada.

That will only be the tip of the iceberg for General Fusion, which estimates it will need roughly $47 million over four years to build its reactor.

Richardson met Michel Laberge, General Fusion’s founder and president, at Burnaby’s Creo Inc., where they worked together developing Creo’s high-speed, thermal printing technology.

Laberge, however, wanted to use his scientific know-how for a greater good: solving the world’s energy problems. After examining a spectrum of energy generation technologies, he landed on magnetized target fusion.

First contemplated in the late ’70s, the technology was largely put aside as the resources to develop didn’t exist. Scientists have since created hot fusion reactions, but have been unable to generate more energy than is used to actually create the reaction. As well, the net energy gain must large be enough to make fusion commercially applicable.

In founding General Fusion in 2002, Laberge concluded that new modern technologies could make the process feasible.

By 2006, he had developed a prototype reactor using $400,000 of investment from friends, family and angel investors and an additional $400,000 in government grants and tax credits.

Laberge invited Richardson to join the company as CEO in 2006.

In 2007, they raised an additional $1.4 million in seed money and government grants.

With project partners the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Powertech Labs Inc., the company has since completed preliminary designs of the 100MW reactor and run simulations.

Using the venture and government capital it expects to receive in coming months, the company will begin turning its designs and theories into reality. It will need to construct an injector system for delivering plasma – the fuel in a hot fusion reaction – into the reactor.

Plasma is a mix of tritium and deuterium – isotopes of hydrogen that are relatively easy and cheap to come by.

When the isotopes fuse, energy is released.

But because the isotopes naturally repel each other, heat on the scale of 150 million degrees C is required to overcome their repellant properties.

To heat the isotopes, General Fusion designed a high-speed compression system. Using cheap compressed air, the system slams a piston against the sphere-shaped reactor. Upon impact, the compression energy is converted into an acoustic wave.

Within the reactor, a liquid metal sphere contains the plasma. The acoustic wave compresses the liquid metal sphere, which tightens around the plasma, compressing the plasma and causing it to heat up.

As they heat, the isotopes in the plasma overcome their repellant properties and fuse, creating a burst of energy.

That energy heats the liquid metal sphere, which is then drained from the reactor and used to heat water in a boiler.

“Fusion energy has been examined for 50 years, and there’s actually been – people are not aware of it – huge progress,” said Richardson.

In the next two years, the company plans to build components of the reactor at full-scale.

According to Mike Brown, executive director of Chrysalix, General Fusion still has many years and plenty of risk ahead of it.

“There are still some parts of the physics that are not tied down,” he said. “In order to overcome that, you set up a very disciplined, milestone-based approach.”

Brown said the objective of General Fusion and its investors is not necessarily to fully commercialize a hot fusion reactor, but create value in intellectual property and technological competence.

“And over time, we are going to have to locate the people who want to buy that competence,” said Brown, adding that a full-scale reactor is a very expensive proposition, beyond the resources of Chrysalix and General Fusion’s other investors.

“If we can start to deliver on the promise of what this technology can do, there should be quite a few people who care about this.” •

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Business in Vancouver May 5-11, 2009; issue 1019

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