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| One of experimental chambers that will be used as part of the TINEX project.
Photos: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering |
TINEX Team Takes Major Leap Forward for Inertial Nuclear Fusion with DOE-Funded Project
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded over $107 million to advance fusion energy research, with San Diego-based General Atomics leading a groundbreaking new initiative to tackle key challenges in developing practical fusion power plants.
The project, called Target Injector Nexus for Experimental Development (TINEX), brings together major research institutions including UC San Diego, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Colorado State University. The collaboration aims to overcome critical obstacles in scaling up inertial fusion energy, which uses high-power lasers to create fusion reactions.
"Developing this technology has been a lifelong passion for many because it has the potential to provide a sustainable, long-term energy source for humanity's future needs," said Neil Alexander, director of Inertial Fusion Energy at General Atomics Energy Group.
A key challenge the project faces is developing systems that can fire lasers at fusion targets five to eight times per second – a dramatic increase from current experimental facilities that manage only a few shots per day. Researchers must also address issues like debris management and precise laser targeting.
The announcement comes at a time of increasing momentum in fusion research. General Atomics recently celebrated its 200,000th plasma shot at its DIII-D fusion reactor, the only operating fusion reactor in the United States. The company is also contributing to ITER, an international fusion project in France that aims to produce ten times more fusion energy than it consumes.
"At the government level, the United States is investing strongly in fusion and so are our competitors. China is actually outspending the United States by a factor of two," noted Richard Buttery, director of the DIII-D fusion reactor at General Atomics.
The project includes an industrial council comprising seven leading fusion companies and will focus on workforce development through partnerships with universities. With this increased investment and collaboration, industry experts believe fusion power plants could become operational in the 2030s.
Nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun, offers the promise of nearly limitless clean energy without the long-lasting nuclear waste associated with current nuclear fission plants. The fuel for fusion can be extracted from seawater and common minerals, making it a potentially abundant and sustainable energy source for the future.
UC San Diego a Key Part of New Project Led by General Atomics to Advance Fusion Energy
The inertial fusion energy project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and includes the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the SLAC National Accelerator Lab, and Colorado State University
The University of California San Diego is part of a new research partnership led by San Diego-based General Atomics that was recently awarded funding by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The project, called the Target Injector Nexus for Experimental Development (TINEX), aims to overcome critical obstacles in developing and scaling up inertial fusion power plants.
It is one of six awards, collectively totalling $107 million, made by the DOE as part of the Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives.
"The TINEX project will be important for our collective efforts to make inertial fusion energy practical,” said mechanical engineering professor Javier E. Garay, director of the Fusion Engineering Institute at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
It is an excellent example of the continued momentum of fusion engineering and science here at UC San Diego, in collaboration with General Atomics and the broader fusion ecosystem in the region, the state and the nation, Garay added.
“We are excited to use the TINEX collaboration to bring fusion energy closer to commercialization,” said Neil Alexander, director of Inertial Fusion Energy for General Atomics Energy Group and principal investigator on the project. “Developing this technology has been a lifelong passion for many because it has the potential to provide a sustainable, long-term energy source for humanity’s future needs. I am excited to have UCSD in this FIRE Collaboration taking next steps in the development of fusion power.”
Professor Farhat Beg is the principal investigator for the UC San Diego portion of the project.
Inertial fusion and laser targets
Inertial fusion energy relies on high-power lasers hitting small targets made of frozen deuterium and tritium to create the extreme pressures and temperatures that lead to fusion. A number of obstacles stand in the way of building inertial fusion energy power plants that can be connected to the power grid – including a series of challenges related to the lasers and targets.
To become commercially successful, these power plants will have to shoot lasers at five to eight targets per second inside a fusion chamber. Existing experimental facilities take a handful of shots a day. Researchers at UC San Diego, led by Professor Farhat Beg, Co-Director of Fusion Engineering Institute, will work to improve the systems that inject the targets into the fusion chambers, with the goal of dramatically increasing performance.
In addition, debris is generated when powerful lasers hit the targets. These debris can damage the sensors, as well as the optic used to fire lasers at the targets. Beg and colleagues will work to find ways to mitigate this damage.
Engineers will also have to develop control systems and algorithms that train these lasers on the target with extreme precision. At UC San Diego, researchers from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), part of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences, will be leading the application of AI/machine learning to laser targeting systems and interpreting experiment diagnostics.
"We are very eager to get started on application of AI/ML for the FIRE project. We have been working with GA researchers on the design of AI/ML models for on-shot pulse shape reconstruction at the GALADRIEL Laser Facility at GA, and that will be very useful for this AI/ML research,” said Amit Majumdar, Director of the Data Enabled Scientific Computing Division at SDSC.
Workforce development
UC San Diego, General Atomics and the entire TIMEX will work together on inspiring and developing the workforce necessary to run fusion power plants.
“Our undergraduate and graduate students will get unique experiences by learning about inertial fusion energy technologies; and gain hands-on experience working with targets, diagnostic devices and lasers,” said Beg, who is also a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Jacobs School.
In addition to UC San Diego, General Atomics is partnering with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, Colorado State University, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The TINEX collaboration also includes an industrial council of leading inertial fusion power plant companies, including Xcimer Energy, Marvel Fusion, Longview Energy Systems, LaserFusionX, HB11, Focused Energy, and Blue Laser Fusion.
General Atomics Secures DOE Funding to Advance Vital Fusion Energy Research and Development
Funding Will Drive Target Fabrication and Laser Study for Commercial Inertial Fusion Power Plants and Support Critical Systems Research for Magnetic Fusion Energy
SAN DIEGO (Feb. 10, 2025) — Scientists at General Atomics (GA) are delighted this week after receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for important fusion energy research. As part of the Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives, the DOE has awarded more than $107 million to six pioneering projects nationwide, including the GA-led Collaborative Target Injector Nexus for Experimental Development (TINEX)—a program dedicated to overcoming critical obstacles in developing and scaling inertial fusion power plants—as well as two other initiatives that the company supports through its extensive scientific expertise.
This funding reaffirms GA’s position as a leader in fusion energy innovation, alongside its partners: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, Colorado State University, University of California San Diego, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“We are excited to use the TINEX collaboration to bring fusion energy closer to commercialization,” said Neil Alexander, director of Inertial Fusion Energy for General Atomics Energy Group. “Developing this technology has been a lifelong passion for many because it has the potential to provide a sustainable, long-term energy source for humanity’s future needs.”
The TINEX collaboration includes an industrial council of leading inertial fusion power plant companies, including Xcimer Energy, Marvel Fusion, Longview Energy Systems, LaserFusionX, HB11, Focused Energy, and Blue Laser Fusion. The council will guide partners in developing practical solutions to critical industry challenges, such as the fabrication and use of fusion fuel targets—tiny, gas-filled capsules that are delivered into a confinement chamber and struck by high-powered lasers to generate intense heat. In addition, the project will tackle other obstacles that may arise in a full-scale power plant, such as managing debris inside the chamber, mitigating damage to optical systems caused by capsule fragments, improving capsule resilience to high temperatures, and creating tracking sensors to accurately aim lasers at the fast-moving capsules.
In addition to leading TINEX, GA will participate in two other DOE-funded projects. The Fuel Cycle Fusion Innovative Research Engine, led by Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), will address environmental challenges in scaling up fusion power, particularly those related to the fuel cycle. The Blanket Neutron Test Fusion Innovative Research Engine, led by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), will focus on fusion blanket development, a crucial component of fusion power plant design that captures the energy and transports it from the fusion core for conversion into electricity. The project will enable scientists to test neutron impacts on blanket components and develop predictive modeling and simulation tools.
GA will provide engineering expertise and facility modeling for both confinement fusion projects, utilizing its FUSE program to establish operational fusion plant states that meet stakeholder requirements.
“We are grateful to the DOE and our partners for their support and dedication to advancing these vital programs,” said Wayne Solomon, vice president of Magnetic Fusion Energy for the General Atomics Energy Group. “This funding propels two critical components forward that will help carry us closer to achieving a fully operational fusion power plant in the United States.”
Fusion is the same process that powers the sun. Unlike current nuclear power, which splits atoms, fusion fuses them together, creating intense heat that can be used to generate electricity. Researchers believe this novel high-tech method could lead to almost unlimited sustainable energy to meet humanity’s future needs.
For decades, General Atomics has been at the forefront of fusion technology research. At its San Diego headquarters, GA scientists and engineers collaborate with teams worldwide to develop the technologies needed to make fusion power plants a reality. GA also operates the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a Department of Energy user facility that houses the only operating fusion reactor (tokamak) in the U.S., where scientists collaborate to find the best solutions for bringing fusion power to market.
For more information about General Atomics’ fusion technology research, visit ga.com/energy-systems-and-products.
About General Atomics
Since the dawn of the
atomic age, General Atomics innovations have advanced the state of the
art across the full spectrum of science and technology – from nuclear
energy and defense to medicine and high-performance computing. Behind a
talented global team of scientists, engineers, and professionals, GA’s
unique experience and capabilities continue to deliver safe,
sustainable, economical, and innovative solutions to meet growing global
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Media Contact:
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energy Feb 10, 2025
General Atomics sees an end to the long road toward nuclear fusion
Contributors: Mike Damron / Video Journalist
Published January 30, 2025 at 3:52 PM PST
In August last year the control room at General Atomics had something to celebrate. A room full of scientists stood by their computers, took cell phone photos and cheered as their nuclear reactor generated “plasma shot” number 200,000.
Each plasma shot is an experimental fusion of hydrogen atoms you smash together to generate the heat that’s needed to produce energy.
“With fusion what we’re going to do is we take two particles, and if you smash them together hard enough, they release net energy,” said David Pace, deputy director of the fusion facility, run by General Atomics. “And that’s what we do. We want to smash together a lot of particles and make a lot of energy.”
Nuclear fusion is what happens on the sun. And the quest to “put the sun in a bottle” and provide fusion energy on earth has been going on since World War II.
The process leaves behind helium and clean energy, and none of that long-lasting nuclear waste that has bedeviled its power generating cousin, the nuclear fission power plant.
Richard Buttery is the director of what they call the DIII-D fusion reactor at General Atomics, which is funded by the department of energy. He said the promise of exploiting fusion on earth is a virtually limitless supply of energy.
“Because the fuel we have is abundant around the world. Deuterium. That’s one type of hydrogen that we use. You just extract that from seawater,” Buttery said. “The other fuel we want to use, lithium, is something you can pull out of the ground. It’s common and it’s in your cell phone batteries. And the amount you need to do a lot of energy is very small.”
The pursuit of fusion energy has been going on so long a lot of the testing infrastructure is pretty old school. The fusion reactor at General Atomics is called a tokamak, a technology first developed by the Russians that has been around since the 1960s.
It's a donut-shaped oven that conducts the intense heat needed for fusion. Powerful magnets are used to control the energy.
But with all the progress that’s been made over the years, we still don’t have the technology to contain and release fusion energy so it can boil water, run a turbine and generate power.
“We have a piece of science that we understand really, really well. But now we have to fold it into a physical device that takes you to the next step, that gets you close to producing electricity. And it’s really this integration and this full system approach that is just an incredibly challenging problem,” Pace said.
He said the industry still needs more research and development. The development of materials like the steel that go inside the reactor, that doesn’t erode unexpectedly or emit particles that are important to fusion.
Finding a way in the creation of ITER
A possible answer to this challenging problem is taking shape in France, an international project called ITER, Latin for “the way.”
It is a tokamak-powered facility that will be the closest thing the world has seen to a fusion power plant. Its goal is to get fusion to continue in the reactor under its own heat and power, not relying on the kind of imported heat needed for a brief plasma shot.
“We’re putting energy in to make it really hot,” Pace said. “Once it starts fusing the energy from the fusion keeps it hot enough that it keeps on fusing. Then we can turn off our heating and it’s what we call burning. Keeping itself at fusion temperatures and we can focus on extracting energy from it.”
Buttery says ITER’s goal is to produce ten times the fusion energy it gets from an outside heating source. This year General Atomics will ship ITER a magnet to contain its superhot ball of gas. And this won’t be any old magnet.
“This is a magnet that is so powerful that it could lift an aircraft carrier out of the water,” Buttery said.
Scientific work on fusion energy has gone on for so long you have to forgive people for casting doubt when they hear someone say we’re almost there.
Innovation and public policy professor David Victor co-directs UC San Diego’s energy decarbonization initiative. He said the old joke about fusion is that it’s the great energy source of the future and it always will be.
Even so, Victor said that recent progress toward the goal is no joke.
“There are a lot of improvements in technology that make several different strategies for fusion energy at least seem a lot more plausible than they did even five or ten years ago,” he said. “New kinds of lasers. In particular, new kinds of magnets, really, really powerful magnets that can contain a fusion plasma.”
But he cautions us to know every new energy source has uncertainties. And as we consider fusion, don't forget the potential for wind and solar. Even nuclear fission may have a future if the industry can build small modular units.
Meanwhile, Buttery said private sector investment in fusion in the U.S. has increased hugely, from venture capitalists to philanthropic groups.
“At the government level, the United States is investing strongly in fusion and so are our competitors. China is actually outspending the United States by a factor of two, in this government funding,” he said.
Buttery
adds that with increased investment, people in the fusion field believe
we will have fusion power plants sometime in the 2030s. If that does
happen, the question of whether you can draw power from one of them may
depend on where you live.
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