Draft2:Innovation Network for Fusion Energy: Difference between revisions
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The Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program aims to accelerate fusion energy development in the private sector by reducing impediments to collaboration involving the expertise and unique resources available at DOE laboratories and universities. This will ensure the nation’s energy, environmental and security needs by resolving technical, cost, and safety issues for industry.
The partnership is lead by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Funding
Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) provided fiscal year 2023 funds for business awards to assist applicants seeking access to the world class expertise and capabilities available across the U.S. DOE national labs and accredited U.S. universities. This is one component of the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE), a DOE initiative to provide the fusion industrial community with access to the technical and financial support necessary to move new or advanced fusion technologies toward realization with the assistance of DOE-funded fusion institutions. The objective of INFUSE is to accelerate basic research to develop cost-effective, innovative fusion energy technologies in the private sector.
Mission
The FES program mission is to expand the fundamental understanding of matter at very high temperatures and densities and to build the scientific foundation needed to develop a fusion energy source. This is accomplished by studying plasma and its interactions with its surroundings across wide ranges of temperature and density, developing advanced diagnostics to make detailed measurements of its properties and dynamics, and creating theoretical and computational models to resolve essential physics principles.
Partnership awards
FES partnership awards are not financial awards made directly to applicants. Awards provide funding to a laboratory or university in order to help eligible private-sector companies overcome critical scientific and technological challenges in the pursuit of fusion energy. In majority of cases, DOE anticipates making single year awards with a value of between $100k – $350k and a duration of 12 months. However, DOE will entertain requests of up to $750k in total value and/or duration of 24 months for work deemed to be of critical value by the company. In all cases, a 20 percent cost share is required, calculated based on the full project cost (where the full project cost is defined as the sum of the government share and the private partner share) and as detailed in a budget estimate worksheet submitted with the RFA. A single institution may submit up to five RFA’s across any of the topics identified below. They may fall under one topical area or be spread across several.
Topics
https://infuse.ornl.gov/infuse-topics/
Diagnostics
Many of the diagnostics developed at the participating institutes over the last fifty years can be made available to private companies and adapted for use on their own machines through collaboration with the INFUSE institutions.
Enabling Technologies
Enabling technologies includes, but is not limited to: magnets and magnet materials, RF heating systems, pellet fueling, advanced plasma facing components, advanced divertor configurations, remote handling, blanket and shielding evaluations, tritium processing.
Experimental Capabilities
The experimental capabilities area involves partnering with the public institutions participating in INFUSE to utilize already existing, unique facilities at those institutes to qualify materials or test engineering concepts.
Materials
Fusion materials research topics include both structural and functional materials required for nuclear systems.
Modeling and Simulation
Modeling and simulation has a long history with researchers and scientists exploring fusion energy technologies through SciDAC. Researchers and scientists in the Department of Energy are developing new tools to predict the performance, reliability and economics of fusion reactor concepts.
Paths to Commercialization
Activities that support paths to eventual fusion commercialization may include, but are not limited to: accident and safety analysis, public engagement, fuel supplies, advanced manufacturing, waste disposition and recycling.
Stakeholders
Labs
DOE's National laboratory involved include:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Companies
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS)
This spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is developing a compact tokamak facility called SPARC that features novel high-temperature superconductors. PPPL physicists led by Alessandro Bortolon will conduct research for SPARC on its retention of deuterium - a form of hydrogen -in the boron with which CFS plans to coat the interior of its tokamak. The deuterium will stand-in for tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Too much retained tritium in the tokamak wall or dust would leave insufficient room for fresh tritium to be injected into the plasma.
Focused Energy
This Austin, Texas, startup aims to develop commercial fusion energy within the next 20 years using laser technology. A PPPL project headed by physicists Will Fox and Sophia Malko will design a suite of diagnostics to optimize the laser-driven proton beams that will ignite fusion reactions. The design will draw on PPPL's experience developing such diagnostics and its extensive review of current systems.
Helion Energy
This Everett, Washington, company is developing a Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) device to produce pulsed fusion energy. Helion and PPPL physicist Elena Belova will use a hybrid code developed at PPPL to simulate the FRC plasma dynamics in Helion experiments. The partners will compare the numerical and experimental results to improve understanding of FRC behavior and prepare a next-step prototype.
Kyoto Fusioneering America
This Japanese-based subsidiary in Seattle, Washington, develops advanced technologies for commercial fusion reactors. The company will work with Andrei Khodak, a PPPL principal engineer, to speed the development of innovative liquid metal blankets for fusion devices. Such blankets will use high-energy neutrons released by 100-million degree fusion reactions to breed tritium and will collect the heat to generate electricity.
Bruker OST
This Carteret, New Jersey, unit of Germany’s Gauss Fusion (see below) will partner with Yuhu Zhai, a PPPL principal engineer, to build and test a high-temperature superconducting magnetic coil. The PPPL-designed coil could become part of next-generation central magnets called solenoids that will fit into the interior of spherical tokamaks. Such tokamaks, like today’s National Spherical Tokamak Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at PPPL, have limited space for solenoids to launch and ramp up fusion plasma.
Gauss Fusion
This partnership will explore another type of high-temperature superconductor designed to work with future spherical tokamaks that have high magnetic fields. Engineer Yuhu Zhai will use PPPL’s modeling capabilities to lead the exploration. The project also will compare the low temperature superconductor, which must operate in liquid helium at near-zero temperature, with high-temperature superconductors that can run at higher current density and higher temperature and magnetic fields.
Contact
infuse@ornl.gov
Related links
External links
- Official website
- https://infuse.ornl.gov/awards/
- https://www.pppl.gov/news/2023/record-six-public-private-partnership-grants-speed-arrival-fusion-energy-awarded-pppl
Social media
References
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