Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Energy |
Founded | 2017 |
Headquarters | Seattle, Washington , US |
Key people | Benj Conway (President, CEO), Brian A. Nelson (CTO), Uri Shumlak (CSO) |
Number of employees | 150 (2023) |
Website | www |
Zap Energy is an American company that aims to commercialize fusion power through use of a sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch. The company is based near Seattle with research facilities in Everett and Mukilteo, Washington. [1] The company aims to scale their technology to maintain plasma stability at increasingly higher energy levels, with the goal of achieving scientific breakeven and eventual commercial profitability. [2] [3] [4]
The conceptual basis for the technology was developed at the University of Washington led by Uri Shumlak. Zap Energy formed following the positive initial results achieved by the FuZE device as part of ARPA-E's ALPHA program. The company was co-founded by British entrepreneur and investor Benj Conway (President, CEO), together with nuclear physicists Brian A. Nelson (Chief Technology Officer) and Uri Shumlak (Chief Science Officer). [5]
The pinch effect relies on the fact that a current flowing in a conductor produces an inward-directed force, squeezing the conductor. In the case of a fusion device, the conductor is a plasma of the fusion fuel. The current is induced either using an external magnet, or directly applied using electrodes in the reaction chamber. The device's relative simplicity led many researchers around the world to build pinch systems.
In early experiments, pinch systems were found to be unstable and the plasma was quickly forced into the walls of the reaction chamber, cooling it so that fusion does not occur. This led to the development of stabilized pinch machines, most notably the UK's ZETA. At first it appeared these designs were free from the instabilities of the earlier devices. However, further investigation showed that new "microinstabilities" were just as effective at destroying confinement as the earlier, larger, instabilities had been. With no obvious solution to these new class of problems, major research on the classic pinch devices ended by the early 1960s.
The idea of using the flow of the plasma as an additional stabilizing force emerged in the 1990s. In this concept, the pinch is developed such that the plasma flows at different speeds as one moves out from the center of the plasma column, with the outer layers being about ten times as fast as the center. [6] As the magnetic field created by the pinch current is a function of both the density and speed of the charges, this causes the resulting pinch field to be non-linear across the plasma column. This surpasses the growth rate of the kink, sausage and interchange instabilities. The exact conditions that need to be reached to stabilize the pinch is an open area of research. [7] [8]
Zap Energy's technical origins rely on the work of Dr. Uri Shumlak at the University of Washington, starting in 1995. The university built three experimental machines to test the flowing pinch:
The Shumlak lab developed custom tools to measure their plasmas. [13]
Zap Energy was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from the FuZE (Fusion Z-pinch Experiment) research team at the University of Washington and collaborations with researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [14] Zap Energy then built a next generation fusion core, FuZE-Q (2021–present at Zap Energy). Zap achieved their first fusion reaction as a company in 2018, [15] but in November 2021, Livermore National Laboratory provided an independent and more precise measurement of neutron production inside the flowing pinch, proving that the machine can do fusion with deuterium fuel. [16] The effort was led by ARPA-E, where the agency organized fusion teams to support private fusion companies.
From 2015 to 2020, a series of U.S. Department of Energy grants enabled the team to test their sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch reactor at progressively higher energy levels. [18] [19] [20] [21]
In July 2020, Zap Energy raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. [22]
In May 2021 Zap closed $27.5 million in Series B funding including from Addition, Energy Impact Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital. [23] [5] [24] Chevron's financing was the first investment in fusion energy by a major U.S. oil company. [25] [26]
In June 2022, Zap Energy announced first plasmas in their breakeven device (FuZE-Q) and a $160 million Series C raise backed by Lowercarbon Capital, Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shell PLC, Valor, DCVC, Energy Impact Partners, Chevron and others. [27] [28]
In October 2022, the Centralia Coal Transition Energy Technology Board recently awarded a $1 million grant to Zap Energy to fund the costs of assessing the feasibility of constructing a Zap fusion energy pilot plant at the site of the TransAlta Big Hanaford gas power plant. [29]
In May 2023, Zap Energy was one of eight companies chosen for the United States Department of Energy Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. [30] [31]
In June 2023, Zap Energy secured significant new repetitive pulsed power manufacturing capabilities by acquiring the liquidated assets of ICAR. [32] Also in June, Zap Energy was selected as a World Economic Forum Technology Unicorn, valued at more than one billion USD. [33]
In 2024 FuZE demonstrated 1-3 keV plasma electron temperatures — (11 to 37 million degrees C), the simplest, smallest, and lowest cost device to do so. [34]
The Zap Energy reactor is a pulsed power system with no external magnets. [1] [35] [12] The machine is a ~2 meter long metal tube with a cathode running halfway down the middle. A voltage is applied between the central cathode and the grounded wall. Fusion fuel is puffed in the back of the machine, which ionizes due to Paschen breakdown, creating a plasma. [17] This plasma sweeps forward and assembles into a ~50 cm long flowing pinch in the gap between the cathode and the wall.
Zap Energy has outfitted these machines with tools to measure the performance of the flowing pinch. Among them includes:
Other diagnostic tools have been used to measure the pinches, many in partnership with experimenters from national laboratories.
Zap Energy argued that the rate of fusion in a flowing pinch scales as the pinch current to the 11th power [38] [39] [40] and that because of this, all that is needed to generate net power from a flowing pinch is higher current. However, this scaling model is based on adiabatic plasmas and that model fails to capture all real-world behavior.[ citation needed ]
Critics have pointed out that higher currents could introduce drift instabilities and shockwaves that could tear the plasma apart. [40] In the case of drift waves, the (+) ions and (-) electrons would move at different speeds because of their mass differences, and this would disrupt the plasma. Shockwaves could form during the pinch assembly process. When the plasma sweeps together at high speeds, the two plasma waves could form a shockwave at higher speeds. Finding other ways to form the pinch plasma are possible solutions to this problem.
Supporting simulations have argued that to reach net power ~650 kiloamps (kA) of current is needed through the flowing pinch. As of late 2021 the company was testing with currents reaching 500 kA. [41]
Zap Energy proposed to surround the pinch with a molten blanket to absorb the material coming off the pinch. This approach is similar to those proposed by First Light Fusion and General Fusion.
The higher pinch currents that are needed for scale-up introduce the possibility of electrode melting and electrode erosion. This kind of erosion has been researched extensively within the field of spacecraft electric propulsion. In 2021, Zap's cathodes were made from copper coated with Tungsten carbide, which has a maximum melting point of 3,103 kelvin. [42] Materials like graphene are a possible solution. The machines could be built with bigger spot sizes, active cooling or another work-around.
Another critique is that the volume of plasma inside the narrow pinch beam is relatively small when compared to fusion machines such as magnetic mirrors, tokamaks or other fusion approaches. This caps the amount of fusion fuel, and subsequently, the amount of energy that can be made in a flowing pinch. Higher shot rates, multiple machines, and longer and wider pinch beams are all possible solutions.
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei, usually deuterium and tritium, combine to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in nuclear binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main-sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released.
A tokamak is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field generated by external magnets to confine plasma in the shape of an axially-symmetrical torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. The tokamak concept is currently one of the leading candidates for a practical fusion reactor.
In plasma physics, plasma stability concerns the stability properties of a plasma in equilibrium and its behavior under small perturbations. The stability of the system determines if the perturbations will grow, oscillate, or be damped out. It is an important consideration in topics such as nuclear fusion and astrophysical plasma.
Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices designed to harness this energy are known as fusion reactors. Research into fusion reactors began in the 1940s, but as of 2024, no device has reached net power, although net positive reactions have been achieved.
This timeline of nuclear fusion is an incomplete chronological summary of significant events in the study and use of nuclear fusion.
Inertial electrostatic confinement, or IEC, is a class of fusion power devices that use electric fields to confine the plasma rather than the more common approach using magnetic fields found in magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) designs. Most IEC devices directly accelerate their fuel to fusion conditions, thereby avoiding energy losses seen during the longer heating stages of MCF devices. In theory, this makes them more suitable for using alternative aneutronic fusion fuels, which offer a number of major practical benefits and makes IEC devices one of the more widely studied approaches to fusion.
In fusion power research, the Z-pinch is a type of plasma confinement system that uses an electric current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it. These systems were originally referred to simply as pinch or Bennett pinch, but the introduction of the θ-pinch concept led to the need for clearer, more precise terminology.
Aneutronic fusion is any form of fusion power in which very little of the energy released is carried by neutrons. While the lowest-threshold nuclear fusion reactions release up to 80% of their energy in the form of neutrons, aneutronic reactions release energy in the form of charged particles, typically protons or alpha particles. Successful aneutronic fusion would greatly reduce problems associated with neutron radiation such as damaging ionizing radiation, neutron activation, reactor maintenance, and requirements for biological shielding, remote handling and safety.
Magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) is an approach to generate thermonuclear fusion power that uses magnetic fields to confine fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Magnetic confinement is one of two major branches of controlled fusion research, along with inertial confinement fusion.
A field-reversed configuration (FRC) is a type of plasma device studied as a means of producing nuclear fusion. It confines a plasma on closed magnetic field lines without a central penetration. In an FRC, the plasma has the form of a self-stable torus, similar to a smoke ring.
A dense plasma focus (DPF) is a type of plasma generating system originally developed as a fusion power device starting in the early 1960s. The system demonstrated scaling laws that suggested it would not be useful in the commercial power role, and since the 1980s it has been used primarily as a fusion teaching system, and as a source of neutrons and X-rays.
ZETA, short for Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly, was a major experiment in the early history of fusion power research. Based on the pinch plasma confinement technique, and built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the United Kingdom, ZETA was larger and more powerful than any fusion machine in the world at that time. Its goal was to produce large numbers of fusion reactions, although it was not large enough to produce net energy.
A pinch is the compression of an electrically conducting filament by magnetic forces, or a device that does such. The conductor is usually a plasma, but could also be a solid or liquid metal. Pinches were the first type of device used for experiments in controlled nuclear fusion power.
The polywell is a proposed design for a fusion reactor using an electric and magnetic field to heat ions to fusion conditions.
A linear transformer driver (LTD) within physics and energy, is an annular parallel connection of switches and capacitors. The driver is designed to deliver rapid high power pulses. The LTD was invented at the Institute of High Current Electronics (IHCE) in Tomsk, Russia. The LTD is capable of producing high current pulses, up to 1 mega amps (106 ampere), with a risetime of less than 100 ns. This is an improvement over Marx generator based pulsed power devices which require pulse compression to achieve such fast risetimes. It is being considered as a driver for z-pinch based inertial confinement fusion.
Helion Energy, Inc. is an American fusion research company, located in Everett, Washington. They are developing a magneto-inertial fusion technology to produce helium-3 and fusion power via aneutronic fusion, which could produce low-cost clean electric energy using a fuel that can be derived exclusively from water.
Leopoldo Soto Norambuena is a Chilean physicist. He works at the Comisión Chilena de Energía Nuclear where he founded the Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion Laboratory. His main contributions are in experimental physics.
The history of nuclear fusion began early in the 20th century as an inquiry into how stars powered themselves and expanded to incorporate a broad inquiry into the nature of matter and energy, as potential applications expanded to include warfare, energy production and rocket propulsion.
Theta-pinch, or θ-pinch, is a type of fusion power reactor design. The name refers to the configuration of currents used to confine the plasma fuel in the reactor, arranged to run around a cylinder in the direction normally denoted as theta in polar coordinate diagrams. The name was chosen to differentiate it from machines based on the pinch effect that arranged their currents running down the centre of the cylinder; these became known as z-pinch machines, referring to the Z-axis in cartesian coordinates.