Article content continued

The task is anything but easy. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project in France has already cost $14 billion and will not produce a full-blown fusion reaction until 2027. The project is run by a seven-nation consortium.

“When it comes to innovation, bigger is not always better,” said Mowry, the newly appointed CEO. “You only need to look at the aerospace industry and the success that Elon Musk and his SpaceX startup have had in creating reusable rockets. NASA was unable to achieve that in half a century with tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.”

General Fusion’s reactor works by containing hydrogen plasma fuel in magnetic suspension and then compressing it with an array of massive pistons, which pushes the temperature of the fuel to 150 million degrees Celsius. The trick is to create a fusion reaction — merging the nuclei of hydrogen atoms — that releases more energy than it takes to create.

The piston-based reactor is designed to create bursts of energy lasting thousandths of a second, rather than maintaining a continuous plasma reaction with enormous energy requirements like some larger projects.

“When you look across the fusion landscape, there are some interesting ideas, but I have a tough time seeing how they translate into a practical power plant,” Mowry said. “General Fusion’s approach makes this more of a solvable problem.”

Heat recovered from the bursts in the GF reactor is used to generate electricity in the same way as conventional nuclear power plants, but without the long-lasting radioactive waste.