First Light Fusion takes major step towards pilot plant

Oxfordshire-based nuclear innovators First Light Fusion have achieved a crucial milestone to help solve one of the key engineering challenges in designing a projectile fusion power plant.

Scientists have successfully increased the ‘standoff’ distance – the distance travelled by a projectile to the fusion target – by more than 10 times.

This comes as First Light continues to work on its design for a pilot plant capable of producing commercial energy from fusion.

It plans to create the extreme temperatures and pressures required to achieve fusion by compressing a target containing fusion fuel using a projectile travelling at very high speed.

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‘Standoff’ distance is the distance between where the ‘projectile’ is launched and the ‘target’ where the fusion implosion happens.

The challenge is to be able to launch a projectile accurately, at velocities of several kilometres per second, while keeping it in a solid state when it hits the fusion fuel.

First Light’s Machine 3 – a pulsed power machine that launches projectiles electromagnetically – has been used for this research for several years, with the highest standoff distance previously achieved being 10 mm.

This is sufficient for testing the design of its amplifier technology. But in a power plant, the standoff distance required is several metres.

First Light is now a step closer to that goal, having increased the distance to 10 cm.

Its latest experiment used a design called the ‘electric gun’. The aim was to explore if an electric gun design could be launched to high velocity on a high energy pulsed power machine without melting, a key requirement for achieving standoff.

As well as meeting the main objective, the shot was also the highest energy electric gun ever tested. 

This month’s successful attempt to increase the standoff distance was led by Mila Fitzgerald, a PhD student at the University of Oxford who’s worked at First Light for over three years.

Mila said: “This is a milestone moment for First Light and the result of a huge amount of effort, time, and perseverance from the whole team.

“As we scale up our approach and look to design a pilot power plant based on First Light’s projectile approach – one of the key challenges is being able to fire a projectile at high speeds and from a further distance. That is the basis of our current pilot plant design.

“This experiment demonstrates a way for us to do that and is an exciting step in the right direction.”

First Light now has a team of fivescientists and engineers working full time on the design and development of a pilot power plant, headed up by Jorge Fradera.

Dr Nick Hawker, Founder and CEO of First Light, added: “As we move into the era of commercialisation of fusion energy, solving the key engineering challenges in a power plant is a core focus for the First Light team.

“With our unique approach, a first-of-its-kind fusion power plant is designed to be as simple and low risk as possible, simplifying the pathway to commercial fusion energy.

“We’ve taken on the standoff challenge because it unlocks huge benefits elsewhere.

“This is a very significant derisking moment. There’s further work to do.

“Now we have a solid projectile, we move on to studying and controlling the accuracy of launch.”

Read more - First Light Fusion hails 'resounding success' of first shot in New Mexico lab