KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A technology developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is another step along in the path to having fusion electricity in the United States by the mid-2030s. ORNL and Type One Energy signed a license agreement for the technology, which will be used to fuel the company’s fusion reactors.
“Signing this agreement today allows us to take technology that has been developed at the lab and bring it out, put it into our program, and then build on that,” said Type One Energy Senior Vice President of External Affairs Matt Miles.
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The agreement covers a suite of cryogenic pellet fueling technologies for next-generation fusion energy devices. ORNL Fusion Energy Division Director Troy Carter explained that the injector was developed over many decades at Oak Ridge and is critical to fuel fusion devices. This is because, unlike a fission device, fusion must be continuously fueled.
“So all the fusion devices that have been in existence use these pellets to fuel. Most recently, it’s been used in Germany on the Wendelstein 7-X accelerator. And without this system to centrally fuel the device, the performance was not very good. Basically, you needed to peak the density to make it perform the way we wanted to. And so they reached record performance thanks to this,” said Carter…