General Fusion making progress towards net gain in about two to three years

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Vancouver-based Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital and the provincially-owned B.C. Innovation Council have organized two tours for TED attendees. Chrysalix, which bills itself as “the most active cleantech venture investor network in the world,” put together a daylong tour of Inventys, D-Wave Systems — creator of the world’s first quantum computers — and General Fusion, which is developing a small, commercially viable fusion reactor using proprietary technology.

General Fusion, which shares investors with D-Wave, is about two to three years out from creating its own power plant. Today, the pistons work well, and the plasma is hot enough and dense enough. Within the last month, the gas donut has started lasting long enough for the system to work, so now the company is turning its focus to compression and timing, according to Michael Delage, VP of strategy and corporate development.

General Fusion thinks it can provide power at a cost of seven cents per kilowatt hour, comparable to the cost of coal.

General fusion also wants to heat the spheromak to 500 eV before injection. They have reached 200 eV, while they would want to reach 500 eV and expect actually to exceed 600 eV.

31 page presentation on General Fusion

D-Wave has raised $130 million, while General Fusion has raised $50 million.

Simulation work from 2005 of the General Fusion process. (93 pages thesis)

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