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In a breakthrough research, a company has stated that it has finished building and testing a fusion reactor that can produce power. First Light Fusion (FLF) group in Oxford, United Kingdom claims to have tested a pulse power device that would generate enough usable power.
Until now, generating power from a fusion reaction needed far more energy to produce power than it could generate. The company calls its reactor Machine 3, which is capable of producing over 2,00,000 volts and more than 14 million amperes within just two microseconds. This is equivalent to over 500 lightning strikes at the same time.
FLF group expects the machine to show fusion this year, after which by 2024, the company aims to show energy gain.
Nicholas Hawker, the founder and CEO of FLF, said that the company has started its experimental campaigns that would “culminate in the first demonstration of fusion from one of our target designs”.
SciTech Europa quoted him further, stating, “In parallel, we are working on the reactor concept and on the commercial aspects of the technology”. He believes that the company’s technology is scalable and the path to the first fusion producing power is very clear.
The fusion reactor costs about £3.6 million that uses about three kilometres of high voltage cable and diagnostic cable which is 10 kilometres long.
Hawker hopes that the company can achieve its target much faster if they find the right target that would work with its reactor.
“We must be led by the science, and there is still a lot to do, but if we can find the target that works with our reactor design, fusion would not be ‘always 30 years away”, he stated.
First Light Fusion comprises of a top-notch advisory board that could help the company achieve its target faster. The company was co-founded by Professor Yiannis Ventikos, Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at University College, London along with Hawker.
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