Fusion Start Xcimer Energy Wednesday flipped the switch on its Phoenix laser system, which the company says is the largest privately owned example in the world.
Xcimer’s approach to fusion energy follows the model of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which demonstrated in December 2022 that a controlled fusion reaction could unleash more power than necessary to turn it on.
The NIF aimed 192 laser beams at a fuel target smaller than a pencil eraser. The energy from the lasers hit the golden target. As the lasers destroy the gold target, their energy is converted into X-rays, which focus on the fuel pellet inside, compressing it until the fuel atoms fuse and release energy.
The company is betting that more powerful, less complex lasers will help turn NIF’s fusion energy concept into something more profitable.
Xcimer’s plans for a fusion power plant call for two lasers capable of firing in microsecond-long pulses. The light from those pulses will be fed through a type of compression system, which will deliver the energy from the lasers to the fuel target in nanoseconds. The faster the fuel is compressed, the more likely it is to generate usable fusion reactions.
Phoenix is a step toward an eventual power plant. The system uses excimer amplificationsimilar to those used in semiconductor manufacturing but significantly more powerful. At full power, the krypton fluoride laser generates more than 1 kilojoule of energy, Xcimer told TechCrunch, and its core is 38 meters long.
While it may be the most powerful privately owned laser, it is still a fraction of what the company says it will need for a commercial power plant, which could exceed 12 megajoules.
Xcimer hopes to complete a prototype in 2028 before working on a larger system that it hopes will produce at least as much energy as it consumes. Sometime in the mid-2030s, it plans to build its first commercial-scale power plant.
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