Tokamak Energy just raised $87 million to put fusion energy on the grid by 2030. Here's why a top analyst says that timeline is unrealistic.

Benji Jones,Benji Jones

Jan 22, 2020, 00:36 IST

Tokamak Energy just raised $87 million to put fusion energy on the grid by 2030. Here's why a top analyst says that timeline is unrealistic.

British startup Tokamak Energy just raised $87 million from investors including billionaire Hans-Peter Wild, who owns the juice brand Capri Sun.
The company's chief executive says the funds will help Tokamak Energy put clean fusion electricity on the grid by 2030.
While scientists say the technology is proven, a top clean-energy analyst says that goal is "very optimistic." It will take years after these systems are built to overcome regulatory barriers, he says.
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In the race to put clean fusion energy on the grid, Britain's Tokamak Energy just got a big push forward.

On Sunday, the company announced that it raised $87 million (£67 million) from investors including billionaire food-flavor mogul Hans-Peter Wild, who built his fortune on the juice brand Capri Sun.

The recent investment brings the company's total funding to well over $100 million, according to PitchBook, putting Tokamak on par with other leading fusion startups including US-based Commonwealth Fusions Systems and the Canadian company, General Fusion.

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Jonathan Carling, the company's chief executive, said Tokamak Energy will use the funds to generate temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius - which is more than six times hotter than the center of the sun - inside its prototype reactor.

Here's why that matters.

The promise of fusion energy

At a basic level, fusion is the process that powers the sun: The nuclei of hydrogen atoms crash into each under extreme heat and pressure, causing them to fuse together and form the nuclei of another, heavier element - helium. This results in a loss of mass and a huge surplus of energy.

That energy is mostly clean and relatively safe, compared to nuclear fission. And so for decades, scientists have been trying to find a commercially feasible way to fuse hydrogen atoms here on Earth.

The most common approach involves using two forms of hydrogen atoms, called deuterium and tritium. They fuse together relatively easily, but the process still requires a tremendous amount of pressure and a temperature as high as 150 million degrees Celsius.

To achieve this, most companies use an obscure device, shaped like a hollow bagel, called a tokamak. Inside a typical tokamak is a superheated hydrogen gas containing deuterium and tritium, known as plasma, that's surrounded by superconducting magnets. Those magnets heat and compress the gas until fusion occurs.

Tokamak Energy - which operates a spherical tokamak that many consider more efficient than the traditional donut-shaped ones - has made considerable progress since it was founded in 2009. Two years ago, it hit the 15 million-degree mark.

Now, with these new funds, the company says it will be able to reach 100 million degrees.

"We've already run it at temperatures hotter than the center of the sun," Carling said in an exclusive interview with Business Insider. "We're just gearing up to begin testing to take it up to a hundred million degrees then up to fusion conditions."

That 100-million-degree milestone is part of the company's plan to put clean fusion energy on the grid by 2030.

"Our overall plan is to be putting electricity into the grid by 2030," Carling said. "I'm confident that it's achievable."

But not everyone is.

Hurdles ahead for commercial fusion

In theory, reaching 100 million degrees is possible, according to Jon Menard, a fusion expert and the deputy director for research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). But it hasn't yet been shown in the device operated by Tokamak Energy.

"We already know that tokamaks can access temperatures that high," he said. "But it hasn't been done in a spherical tokamak."

And even if the startup does reach those temperatures, it could still be decades before electrons generated by fusion enter the grid, according to Louis Brasington, an energy analyst at the research firm Cleantech Group.

Brasington said that while fusion is "fun to talk about," getting to the point of commercialization is more challenging than companies let on.

The first step is proving what's called "gain." Essentially, you have to show that you're putting in less energy to spur and sustain fusion than the energy it generates. Carling says Tokamak Energy is trying to prove gain sometime around 2025.

"Just because they will achieve net gain doesn't necessarily mean they will be commercialized," Brasington said. "What the companies don't talk about is the certification process the companies have to go through to get to that next stage."

One analyst says fusion may not gain commercial traction until the 2030s or 2040s

Brasington is referring to the regulatory hurdles that fusion companies will undoubtedly need to jump over before their technologies power the grid. And it doesn't help that nuclear has a bad reputation.

"Regulations really matters for what sort of restrictions are in play while we are testing these things," Malcolm Handley, a fusion expert at ARPA-E, told Business Insider last year. "If we got the regulations wrong, we could kill this industry.'

That's why Brasington says 2030 is "very optimistic." More likely, he says, is that fusion technology will get commercial traction in the late 2030s or 2040s.

ARPA-E's Handley agrees: "If everybody steps up and does their part, 15 to 20 years."

Menard, on the other hand, says that while it's "very challenging," it's not impossible to have a commercially viable fusion device on the grid by 2030, especially if it just means generating electricity for a short time period.

"A lot of things have to go right," he said. "But it's not impossible. It really depends on how successful they are in the near term and frankly how long you want to make that electricity. If it's for a short duration, it's probably a lot easier, but still extremely challenging."

But at least for now, fusion is attracting the support of billionaires - and not just Hans-Peter Wild.

Last December, General Fusion, which is backed by Jeff Bezos, raised $65 million in venture funding. And in June, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which is backed by a Bill Gates-led fund, closed a $115 million round.

"Investors will typically say that they like the idea of fusion, and see it happening in the second half of the century," Brasington said. "Therefore, they'll contribute some money just in case something works out. I wouldn't be surprised to see a ramp-up of capital going into this space."

But it goes beyond just returns.

With the dangers of climate change so severe, funders say they are looking for breakthrough solutions that might accelerate the transition to clean energy. They know there's no one-size-fits-all approach, and fusion could be among the many that help us get there.

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