Type One Fusion to Locate Fusion Plant at TVA Site

Type One Fusion to Locate Fusion Plant at TVA Site

Type One Energy Group intends to locate to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Bull Run Fossil Plant in Clinton, TN, as the site for building Infinity One, the company’s stellarator fusion prototype machine.

The construction of Infinity One could begin in 2025, following the completion of necessary environmental reviews, partnership agreements, required permits, and operating licenses.

The Bull Run coal fired power plant is adjacent to TVA’s Clinch River site which is slated to be the future home of TVA’s development effort for small modular nuclear (fission) reactors.

Project Infinity is the result of a tri-party memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in 2023 between TVA, Type One Energy, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The agreement is unique due to the collaboration of a private sector fusion developer, a DOE national laboratory, and a commercial nuclear energy utility.

Infinity One will allow Type One Energy to verify important design features of its high field stellarator fusion pilot plant, particularly those related to operating efficiency, reliability, maintainability, and affordability.

Project Infinity, which includes the deployment of Infinity One and Type One Energy’s new headquarters in Tennessee, is expected to bolster economic growth and energy technological leadership in the region. Type One Energy will establish its headquarters in East Tennessee, creating over 300 high-paying jobs within the next five years.

Type One Energy CEO Christofer Mowry said in a press statement, “Type One Energy is committed to making commercial fusion a reality over the next decade. Successful deployment of Infinity One in East Tennessee, with our partners TVA and ORNL, is a critical milestone in our FusionDirect commercialization program. It is also a watershed moment toward the commercialization of fusion, linking for the first time leaders in the technology, utility, and national laboratory sectors on an actual deployment project.”

He added that the company is “offering an excellent platform for a potential long-term fusion research facility.”

TVA President and CEO Jeff Lyash said in a press statement, “We appreciate this partnership between Type One Energy, ORNL, our local power companies and elected and economic development officials as we work together to identify energy technologies for the future.”

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Stephen Streiffer said in the same press statement, “It’s exciting to see a project in Oak Ridge with such great potential to advance fusion energy. We look forward to applying our institutional expertise and capabilities in working with Type One Energy on the engineering challenges they will be tackling at this new test facility.”

In addition to Type One’s commitment to safety and regulatory compliance, the company will begin engaging and collaborating with local communities in East Tennessee during the upcoming months.

Table: Fusion Industry Association, 2023 Annual Report

Type One Wins DOE Funding

Type One was selected to participate in DOE’s Milestone Based Fusion Development Program to develop fusion pilot plant designs and resolve related scientific and technological challenges within five to 10 years. The DOE announced awards totaling $46 million for an initial 18 months of work on May 31, 2023.

On its website, Type One points to “three transformational capabilities” that would make its design cost-competitive:

• Optimization—“advancements in analytical theory, supercomputing, and sophisticated codes.”
• HTS magnets—“can carry over 200 times the current carrying capacity of copper wires for a more compact stellarator.”
• Advanced manufacturing—“with hybrid in situ additive-subtractive manufacturing.”

ARPA-E’s description of Type One’s recent “Breakthroughs Enabling Thermonuclear-Fusion Energy” (BETHE) project notes; “Stellarators have been expensive and time consuming to build. Their large and complex electromagnets need to be shaped, supported, and positioned with precision. “

Type One says in its website it has planned a “path to commercialization” it calls the “FusionDirect” technology program. The next step is “Starblazer” which is a high-field, turbulence-optimized stellarator the company is developing as a commercial fusion pilot plant design.

In parallel with Starblazer, Type One reports it will develop a “risk-reduction platform” over the next several years as a testbed to validate pilot plant engineering design choices and confirm its stellarator plasma physics models and simulations.

On March 29, 2023, Type One Energy announced the closure of an over-subscribed seed funding round of $29M. This move marked the beginning of the firm’s FusionDirect program, which it says is devised to fast-track fusion energy generation in the short-term.

About the Type One Stellarator

According to the US Department of Energy, Stellarators have several advantages over tokamaks, the other main technology that scientists are exploring for fusion power. Stellarators require less injected power to sustain the plasma, have greater design flexibility, and allow for simplification of some aspects of plasma control. However, DOE notes that these benefits come at the cost of increased complexity, especially for the magnetic field coils.

Because confinement of the plasma in a stellarator is driven solely by the external magnets, modifying the shape and strength of their fields has a major impact on performance. To tailor a three-dimensional magnetic field with the right shape to achieve quasi-symmetry requires extensive calculations. Advances in computer modeling code and high-performance computing has provided this capability.

Stellarator Facts

The stellarator concept was invented by Lyman Spitzer at Princeton University in 1951. Much of the early development of stellarators in the 1950s occurred at a laboratory that is now DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Stellarators use external coils to generate a twisting magnetic field to control the plasma instead of inducing electric currents inside the plasma like a tokamak. Making stellarator coils is a challenge because it requires manufacturers to construct large bore wire coils with millimeter precision.

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Princeton Team Uses AI Model To Predict Plasma Stability

• Breakthrough ‘opens door for more dynamic control of a fusion reaction’

(NucNet) A team from Princeton University has worked out a way to use an AI model to predict and prevent instabilities with plasma during fusion reactions. The researchers demonstrated their model could forecast potential plasma instabilities known as tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds in advance.

Image: US Department of Energy – Supercomputer simulation of plasma turbulence in a spherical tokamak.
Image courtesy of Walter Guttenfelder, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and
Filippo Scotti, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

While 300 milliseconds leaves no more than enough time for a slow blink in humans, it was plenty of time for the AI controller to change certain operating parameters to avoid what would have developed into a “tear” within the plasma’s magnetic field lines, upsetting its equilibrium and opening the door for a reaction-ending escape.

The team said the research opens the door for more dynamic control of a fusion reaction than current approaches, and it provides a foundation for using artificial intelligence to solve a broad range of plasma instabilities, which have long been obstacles to achieving a sustained fusion reaction. The team published their findings in Nature on February 21, 2024. (Abstract summary below)

“Previous studies have generally focused on either suppressing or mitigating the effects of these tearing instabilities after they occur in the plasma,” said first author Jaemin Seo, an assistant professor of physics at Chung-Ang University in South Korea who performed much of the work while a postdoctoral researcher in Kolemen’s group. “But our approach allows us to predict and avoid those instabilities before they ever appear.”
Avoiding Fusion Plasma Tearing Instability with Deep Reinforcement Learning – Nature

Nature Abstract – ( summary) For stable and efficient fusion energy production using a tokamak reactor, it is essential to maintain a high-pressure hydrogenic plasma without plasma disruption. Therefore, it is necessary to actively control the tokamak based on the observed plasma state, to maneuver high-pressure plasma while avoiding tearing instability, the leading cause of disruptions.

This presents an obstacle-avoidance problem for which artificial intelligence based on reinforcement learning has recently shown remarkable performance1,2,3,4. However, the obstacle here, the tearing instability, is difficult to forecast and is highly prone to terminating plasma operations, especially in the ITER baseline scenario.

Previously, we developed a multimodal dynamic model that estimates the likelihood of future tearing instability based on signals from multiple diagnostics and actuators. Here we harness this dynamic model as a training environment for reinforcement-learning artificial intelligence, facilitating automated instability prevention.

We demonstrate artificial intelligence control to lower the possibility of disruptive tearing instabilities in DIII-D6, the largest magnetic fusion facility in the United States. The controller maintained the tearing likelihood under a given threshold, even under relatively unfavorable conditions of low safety factor and low torque.

In particular, it allowed the plasma to actively track the stable path within the time-varying operational space while maintaining H-mode performance, which was challenging with traditional preprogrammed control. This controller paves the path to developing stable high-performance operational scenarios for future use in ITER.

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IAEA Designates First Collaborating Center on Artificial Intelligence for Nuclear Power

(News Release) The IAEA has designated the Center for Science of Information at Purdue University as the first IAEA Collaborating Center to support the Agency’s activities on artificial intelligence (AI) for nuclear power applications, including reactor design, plant operations, and training and education.

Thanks to rapid progress in computational resources and data analysis tools, the nuclear industry has already started to benefit from AI, including with machine learning techniques that can streamline nuclear power plant operations and maintenance. AI is also supporting the development of advanced nuclear power technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs).

“With more and more countries looking to nuclear energy to address climate change and sustainable development, this Collaborating Centre will provide much needed support for our Member States in using AI to advance the innovation driving the global nuclear sector,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy.

“This Collaborating Centre will help build confidence in AI applications for high consequence systems, such as nuclear reactors. Without reliable quantification, the nuclear community’s ability to realize the potential of AI will be diminished and this will negatively impact its ability to remain competitive in the energy market,” said Hany Abdel-Khalik, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the Center for Science of Information, which advances information theory through collaborative research and teaching.

The five-year Collaborating Center agreement will support IAEA programmatic activities and knowledge sharing on advancements and innovation in AI for nuclear power. This includes Agency initiatives on benchmark exercises for developing confidence and community-wide acceptance of Al technology for nuclear power, establishing a “benchmarking hub” for coordination and data management, as well as other activities relevant to the development and assessment of Al technologies in collaboration with IAEA Member States.

AI offers the potential to optimize numerous processes within nuclear power plants. It could be used to bolster efficiency and ensure a steady electricity supply by adjusting power generation based on real-time data, including consumer demand, weather and equipment performance. Automation using robotics and AI systems could handle routine tasks, reducing the need for human input. AI could also improve fuel efficiency and maximize the energy output of reactors.

Example types of AI applications include;

• Machine Learning – Using sample data to train computer software to recognize patterns in the data based on algorithms
• Neural Networks – Computer systems designed to imitate the neurological processes of the human brain.
• Natural Language Processing – The ability to understand speech and well as to understand and analyze documents.
• Robotics – Machines that can assist people without human involvement.

The Collaborating Center agreement is part of recent IAEA efforts to strengthen support to countries interested in using AI for nuclear science and technology. The agreement comes after the Agency recently designated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center as the first Collaborating Centre focused on accelerating fusion research, with an emphasis on AI applications to advance the IAEA’s AI for Fusion initiative.

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UKAEA And Kyoto Fusioneering Collaborate To Develop Fusion Energy Projects

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd, a Japanese privately funded fusion technology company, have signed a Communication Framework Agreement to foster partnership on the exchange of knowledge and skills.

The agreement enables the collaboration on the development of technology pertaining to tritium ‘breeding blanket’ design and sets the stage for future joint initiatives, including areas such as tritium fuel cycle, remote handling, and power conversion (thermal cycle) technologies. A breeding blanket is a component to be used in future fusion machines. It is mainly used for producing tritium, which is one of the fuels of fusion reactions. The agreement between the two parties aims to advance blanket technology from its conceptual stage towards commercialization.

One of Kyoto Fusioneering’s recent contracts with UKAEA involved the development of gyrotron technology for UKAEA’s fusion machine, MAST-U, sited at Culham Campus. Gyrotrons can provide high-power microwaves for amplifying fusion reactions. The outcomes of this project intend to provide insights and inform the early designs of STEP, the UK’s prototype powerplant to be built at West Burton in Nottinghamshire.

What is Fusion Energy?

When a mix of two forms of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) is heated to form a controlled plasma at extreme temperatures – 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun – they fuse together to create helium and release energy which can be harnessed to produce electricity. There is more than one way of achieving this. UKAEA’s approach is to hold this hot plasma using strong magnets in a ring-shaped machine called a ‘tokamak’, and then to harness this heat to produce electricity in a similar way to existing power stations.

About UK Atomic Energy Authority

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is the UK’s national organisation responsible for the research and delivery of sustainable fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

UKAEA is implementing the UK’s £650 million Fusion Futures Programme, the UK’s alternative program to associating to Euratom R&T, to support the UK Fusion Strategy. The Program entails establishing new facilities at UKAEA’s Culham Campus in Oxfordshire to facilitate the advancement of new technologies and expand fusion fuel cycle capabilities.

Additionally, a fusion skills package will be introduced focusing on nurturing expertise across a spectrum of disciplines and levels. In 2021, UKAEA opened its Fusion Technology Facility near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, to develop and test materials and components for future fusion powerplants.

About Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd

Kyoto Fusioneering is a privately funded technology start-up founded in 2019 in Kyoto, with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Building upon decades of research at Kyoto University, the company is focused on developing advanced technologies for commercial fusion reactors, including gyrotron systems, tritium fuel cycle technologies, and breeding blankets for tritium production and power generation.

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