Inertia Cuts Fusion Pellet Fill Time to Minutes, Targeting 10 Pellets a Second
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 20
Inertia Cuts Fusion Pellet Fill Time to Minutes, Targeting 10 Pellets a Second
3 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Aug 20
Summary
Inertia said it has reduced fusion fuel pellet filling from several days to minutes, with a full pellet now taking about two to three hours to make at industrial scale.
The speedup tackles one of the startup's 10 commercialization barriers by shrinking a process that can take up to a week at the National Ignition Facility, where pellets are produced only in small numbers.
A key step now grows the frozen deuterium-tritium crystal layer in about 30 minutes, and Inertia says a laser four times more powerful than NIF's lets it tolerate more pellet imperfections.
Faster production also cuts tritium inventory needs for a fuel that costs about $30,000 per gram and has only about 25 kilograms stockpiled globally.
Backed by $450 million and working with Lawrence Livermore's NIF, Inertia says its planned commercial plant will need 10 fuel pellets every second.