Max Planck spinout unveils ‘world’s most viable’ fusion reactor plan – and only needs 6 years to build it – Proxima Fusion has grand plans to transform energy production
https://thenextweb.com/news/max-planck-spinout-proxima-fusion-unveils-fusion-reactor
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From the article
German startup Proxima Fusion — whose team includes engineers from MIT, Google, SpaceX, and McLaren — has unveiled a fusion energy reactor design it believes offers the quickest route to commercially viable fusion power.
Dubbed Stellaris, the machine is a quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarator with high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. This type of reactor uses complex, twisted magnetic fields to confine hot plasma, creating the conditions needed for fusion reactions.
“Stellaris is designed to operate in continuous mode and be intrinsically stable,” Francesco Sciortino, Proxima’s co-founder and CEO, told TNW. “No other fusion power plant design has yet been demonstrated to be capable of that.”
Stellaris’ design builds on the [Wendelstein 7-X](https://thenextweb.com/news/german-startup-fusion-stellarator), the world’s largest stellarator, located at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany. While Wendelstein 7-X was developed for research, Stellaris could one day power the grid.
The stellarator tokamak design has always looked so cool and had some great advantages from what I’ve understood. But the engineering difficulties compared to your regular donut meant it never took off. I believe relatively recent advances in engineering and design have meant it’s much more viable now and I hope this model comes to fruition!
It used to be that we were always 20 years away from viable nuclear fusion. I’m so excited to see that window has narrowed and we will now always be 6 years away from viable nuclear fusion.
If powerpoint slides could make electricity, thorium reactors would have taken this niche instead many years ago.
When they actually do something it might be noteworthy. Until then it goes on the pile of paper reactors.