Clean, Compact Fusion
Thomson scattering is the industry standard diagnostic for measuring electron temperature, typically requiring, large, expensive, custom lasers. We are fortunate that ARPA-E has funded a team from Oakridge National Laboratory to build a portable Thomson system from commercial parts, and they are now installing and calibrating the diagnostic on the PFRC-2!
These measurements will give us critical insight on the plasma temperatures we are achieving with RMFo as a function of input power!
Our team is mentioned in this press release from ORNL about the “traveling” high-temperature plasma diagnostic they are building:
https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-team-builds-portable-diagnostic-fusion-experiments-shelf-items
ARPA-E is supporting the development of several such portable diagnostics in tandem with their other fusion efforts, including our OPEN project. The ORNL team hopes that their “suitcase Thomson scattering” diagnostic will be on its way to us this summer!
When installed, it will measure the electron temperature and density profiles in the PFRC-2 experiment as a function of radius, as often as once per millisecond. The profiles measured will allow us to probe the internal structure of the plasma, but beyond that will also allow us to better interpret the results of our other diagnostics!
Princeton Propeller is a series of talks supported by the Princeton Area Alumni Association (PA3) to showcase technical innovation. Our team was recently invited to give a talk on the new frontier of commercial fusion development! Dr. Swanson and Ms. Thomas took the podium on February 11, 2020, at the Quadrangle Club on Princeton’s campus.
Download our slides at this link:
“Frontiers in Commercializing Fusion Development” Slides
We are now joined by over a dozen private companies in the UK and the US pursuing commercial fusion development. Recent programs in the Department of Energy and their ARPA-E advanced projects division have supported teams in magneto-inertial confinement (ALPHA), compact tokamaks, pinches, and our PFRC (OPEN), and public-private partnerships between labs and the private companies (INFUSE). It’s a great time to be in fusion research!
We have released a new video about the PFRC which highlights terrestrial applications of a fusion microreactor! Enjoy!
We have been hard at work on our ARPA-E project and just submitted our second quarterly report! Our team, including our summer interns, presented several posters on the latest PFRC-2 experimental results at the APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting, held Oct. 21-25 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
We noticed this past Sunday that even Scott Adams has taken notice of fusion companies being in the news:
This is very timely since our ARPA-E OPEN grant was just awarded this week! We are definitely working on it!
Princeton Fusion Systems has been awarded $1.25 Million from ARPA-E for Low-Radioactivity Compact Fusion Devices
Today ARPA-E announced announced that PFS has received a competitive $1.25 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), as part of the Energy cohort of OPEN 2018.
Princeton Fusion Systems seeks to develop technologies to enable future commercial fusion power. Our team’s concept is a small, clean, and portable design based on a field-reversed-configuration plasma. The concept uses an innovative method called odd-parity rotating magnetic field (RMF) to drive electrical current and heat the plasma to fusion temperatures. Under this award, the team will pursue improved electron and ion temperatures through RMF, as well as identify the modeling needed to elucidate the key heating and loss mechanisms for the fusion reactor concept. The team’s ultimate power plant design seeks a very small footprint for a compact, potentially transportable, distributed energy resource that is fully dispatchable and emissions-free.
PFS received this competitive award from ARPA-E’s OPEN 2018 program, in which teams develop innovative technologies to transform the nation’s energy system. OPEN solicitations are an open call to scientists and engineers for technologies across the entire scope of ARPA-E’s energy mission.