General Fusion is pursuing a fast, efficient, and collaborative path to practical fusion power. Its vision is a world with clean, limitless energy, and General Fusion’s mission is to deliver it using its proprietary Magnetized Target Fusion technology. General Fusion is building a Fusion Demonstration Plant to prove this technology and will require numerous state-of-the-art fusion fuel measurement tools. TRIUMF has research experience in relevant electronics and measurement tools.

This project will help the industrial partner design tests to prove a concept for fusion energy production. In the tests, metal cylinders (and other shaped liners) are dynamically collapsed to compress a high temperature plasma to fusion conditions. This highly dynamic event, however, may result in some of the metal from the cylinder contaminating the plasma. A strong shock wave can result in material leaving the wall of the cylinder, or the impact of one metal surface on another can result in jetting of metal. The metal liner can also buckle or rupture.

General Fusion is currently working to develop a relatively small, low-cost fusion reactor; work has reached the proof-of-concept stage. The reactor consists of an enclosure filled with molten lead, spun about one axis to create a plasma-filled cavity. A mechanically-induced shock wave travels radially inwards, focusing as it propagates and collapses the plasma cavity. This collapse heats and pressurizes the plasma and initiates a fusion reaction that releases energy, re-expanding the cavity and causing another shock to propagate radially outwards through the lead.