HeliosJar Compact Fusion Reactor Prototype Completes First Plasma Discharge Validation
Type One Energy's compact tokamak prototype HeliosJar has completed its first plasma discharge validation, reaching a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius with a duration of 3.7 seconds. The company aims to shrink a fusion device to the size of a household refrigerator to power a single home.
HeliosJar Compact Fusion Reactor Prototype Completes First Plasma Discharge Validation
Type One Energy, a US fusion-energy startup, has completed first plasma discharge validation of its compact tokamak prototype HeliosJar. In tests at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the plasma reached a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius and persisted for 3.7 seconds.
HeliosJar uses the company's proprietary quasi-symmetric magnetic configuration, achieved by introducing twisted magnetic fields into the conventional tokamak geometry. This design shrinks the device to one-twentieth the volume of a traditional tokamak while still preserving good plasma confinement. Chief scientist Tom Jarboe said the geometry has been validated through large-scale supercomputer simulations and is projected to reach a Q value (ratio of fusion power to heating power) above 10.
The company's long-term goal is to shrink a commercial HeliosJar to the size of a household refrigerator, with each unit outputting 50 MW of continuous power to serve a single home. Reaching that goal will still require decades of engineering optimization; the current prototype still occupies the volume of a small office.
The HeliosJar project has drawn $140 million from the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E program. Bill Gates has also invested through Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
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