American Scientist Lead the Way to Carbon Free Energy

16-08-2022

FPC's president, Dr. Charles Helsley, announced today that the Corporation will present its plans for a Fusion Power plant, a 'StarPower Energy Complex', at an international symposium to be held in Darmstadt, Germany later this month.  Departing from other fusion systems, the FPC – HIF design avoids the known problems and shortcomings of magnetic confinement fusion and laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF).  Instead, the FPC design is based upon the heavy-ion-accelerator driver, the internationally favored ICF driver approach, to supply the instantaneous source of high amounts of energy to initiate the fusion reaction.

- Fusion Power Corporation announces that it has laid a course to design the first HEAVY ION FUSION (HIF) ENERGY PRODUCTION FACILITY.


“Power production from nuclear fusion can be realized in the near term using technologies in widespread use today,” said Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Robert Burke. “The ability of high-energy particle accelerator systems to ignite fusion burn in commercial settings has been known internationally since the mid-1970s. Accelerators routinely focus energetic beams to sub-millimeter spots, a size matching the requirement of fusion targets. Moreover, standard features of accelerators include rapid pulsing, efficient conversion of wall-plug electricity to beam energy, reliable 24/7 operation, and lifetimes as long as their users want. It now is time to apply this technology, and the lessons learned from the National Ignition Facility, and start producing fusion energy for commercial purposes.” said Burke.

Fusion was first demonstrated in 1952. Research on inertial confinement fusion (ICF), began at the Livermore National Laboratory in 1962. The HIF process was discovered jointly at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in 1975 and has been confirmed in Germany in the 1990’s. Dr. Burke led Argonne’s HIF team from 1976 to 1980.

Drs. Burke and Helsley will present papers at the 18th International Symposium on Heavy Ion Inertial Fusion (HIF 2010) in Darmstadt, Germany August 30 – September 3, 2010.  Their presentations at the conference will provide impetus for the international HIF community to refocus their efforts on HIF’s ability to meet the need of commercial energy production.

“We have completed the scientific study and are now in the process of engineering the design for the first facility to produce 20 to 35 GWe.  This is an exciting step forward to meet the energy needs of the US and the world without carbon emissions or a significant radioactive waste problem.” said Dr. Helsley.  Helsley went on to say, “Accelerator developments over the past three decades, producing CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and Germany’s Helmholtz GSI heavy ion accelerator complex, have made the HIF job substantially more straightforward.”

HIF is the ultimate of clean energy producers. The power chambers are protected from fusion’s intense neutron emission by thick walls of flowing liquid metal.  Intercepting the neutrons in liquid walls internal to the chamber, frees the FPC-HIF design from the need to find materials able to withstand the neutron bombardment a need that makes commercialization of magnetically confined fusion problematic.  The liquid walls also minimize the generation of radioactive waste to a level consistent with the great promise of fusion energy.

FPC plans to bring HIF on line within ten years.