This is the opposite of nuclear fission – the reaction that is used in nuclear power stations today – in which energy is released when a nucleus splits apart to form smaller nuclei. When light nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus, they release bursts of energy. 'Taken together, this is a really, really hard problem - and it requires a very new learning curve. But the TAE team is really smart, and really fast moving, so if anyone is going to solve this problem, the TAE team is well positioned to be the one to do it,' Fisch said.Fusion is the process that takes place in the heart of stars and provides the power that drives the universe. That means it takes a lot of energy to ignite the fusion reaction and then hold the very heated up fuel in place for a long time while also ensuring the reaction byproducts leave the plasma where the reaction is happening quickly so they don't contaminate the reaction. 'At the same time, the temperatures required to reach even this smaller cross section are much larger,' Fisch told CNBC. That's because the cross-section for the pB11 fusion reaction is so small it has to be confined longer for the fusion process to start. 'Proton-boron11 fusion is indeed much more difficult than deuterium-tritium fusion for several reasons,' Nat Fisch, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, told CNBC. The challenge, however, is that a hydrogen-boron fuel source requires much higher temperatures than a deuterium-tritium fuel source. Hydrogen-boron does not need to have a tritium processing supply chain, which TAE counts as a benefit. (A team at the Idaho National Lab is working on researching supply chains for tritium.)īut TAE's fusion process uses hydrogen-boron (also known as proton-boron or p-B11) as a fuel. Deuterium is naturally occurring but tritium has to be produced. The most common source of fuel for fusion reactions involves deuterium and tritium, which are both forms of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Plasma - the most energetic state of matter beyond gas - is generated at both ends of the TAE fusion machine and then shot toward the middle, where the plasmas slam together and ignite the fusion reaction.Īnother key differentiator of TAE's fusion approach is the fuel it uses. TAE is instead using a linear machine, a long thin structure known as a beam-driven field-reversed configuration. Technical milestone reached, challenges remain That means Japan needs to focus on energy efficiency and nuclear power, among other sources, he said. 'Unlike many other countries, Japan does not have an abundance of renewable energy resources and its high population density, mountainous terrain, and steep shorelines represent serious barriers to scaling up the ones it does have, particularly as many of its few flatlands are already heavily covered by solar panels,' Fatih Birol, executive director at the International Energy Agency, said about the country's energy landscape in 2021.

Its geography makes its clean energy goals particularly challenging. Japan currently gets the majority of its energy from coal, oil and natural gas, according to the International Energy Association. The investment follows an announcement in October that TAE had partnered with Japan's National Institute for Fusion Science. TAE was founded in 1998 and aims to have a commercial scale fusion reactor delivering energy to the grid in the early 2030s. But Tuesday marks Google's first cash investment in TAE. Google, the search giant owned by parent company Alphabet, has partnered with TAE since 2014, providing the fusion startup with artificial intelligence and computational power. 'TAE - and fusion technology as a whole - has the potential to be a scalable source of no-carbon energy generation and a key enabler of grid stability as renewables become a greater portion of the energy mix,' said Jim Gable, president of Chevron Technology Ventures, the energy company's corporate venture capital arm, in a statement announcing Tuesday's funding round. Nuclear fusion reverses that process, with energy produced when two smaller atoms slam together to form one larger atom.įusion is the elemental process that powers stars and the sun, but has proven fiendishly difficult to sustain in a controlled reaction on Earth, despite decades of effort. Nuclear fission is the process by way conventional nuclear power plants generate energy in which a larger atom is split into two smaller atoms, thereby releasing energy.

Nuclear fission vs fusion