General Fusion machine to be built at Vancouver International Airport
If all goes as planned, a major hurdle in fusion-based, zero-emission clean energy innovation could be produced on Sea Island in Richmond in just three years from now.
BC-based General Fusion announced today it has plans to build a new magnetized target fusion (MTF) machine at the company’s global headquarters at 6020-6082 Russ Baker Way near the South Terminal of Vancouver International Airport (YVR).
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This machine will be designed to achieve fusion conditions of over 100,000,000°C by 2025, with “scientific breakeven” conditions by 2026. This will “fast-track” the company’s technical progress.
More specifically, this further proof-of-concept will show General Fusion’s ability to “symmetrically compress magnetized plasmas in a repeatable manner and achieve fusion conditions at scale.”
General Fusion’s technology is designed to be lower cost by avoiding other approaches that require expensive superconducting magnets or high-powered lasers.
The company has also raised an additional $33.5 million in funding, with $5 million provided by the Government of British Columbia through a grant, and the remainder led by existing investors BDC Capital and GIC.
The YVR machine is intended to support further work and investment and reduce the risk of General Fusion’s commercial-scale demonstration test plan in Culham Campus of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) — located just outside of Oxford, west of London. The UK plant has effectively been delayed, with the goal now to provide electricity to the grid with commercial fusion energy by the early to mid-2030s.
“Our updated three-year Fusion Demonstration Program puts us on the best path forward to commercialize our technology by the 2030s,” said Greg Twinney, CEO of General Fusion, in a statement. “We’re harnessing our team’s existing strengths right here in Canada and delivering high-value, industry-leading technical milestones in the near term.”
In 2022, General Fusion relocated its global headquarters from Burnaby to a leased industrial property owned by the Vancouver Airport Authority.
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