On September 22, sponsored by Shanghai State Owned Capital Investment Co., Ltd. (SSCI) and co-sponsored by Shanghai Future Industry Fund and Shanghai Future Pioneers Community, the “Star Ocean Set Sail and Fusion for the Future-Special Roadshow on Controlled Nuclear Fusion” was successfully held in Shanghai. This event belongs to the core section of the 18th Pujiang Innovation Forum, “WeStart 2025 Venture Capital Conference”, which brings together nearly 100 guests from government departments, industry, investment institutions and research institutes to conduct in-depth exchanges on the commercialization path of controllable nuclear fusion technology and future energy prospects.
The roadshow brought together a number of fusion companies representing different technological paths and a high-temperature superconducting magnet company, covering spherical tokamak, stellarator, field inversion, deuterium-helium-3 fusion and other directions. The event not only builds a key bridge of “technology exploration-capital docking-industrial synergy”, but also demonstrates China’s diversified innovation ecology and industrialization strength in the field of controllable nuclear fusion, which is a milestone in improving the venture capital system in the field of fusion and promoting the early realization of ultimate energy.
As one of the core enterprises of this roadshow, Tan Yi, founder and chief scientist of Startorus Fusion, systematically elaborated how the company can achieve fusion energy quickly and economically from four dimensions: innovative route, strong team, efficient management and excellent performance.
On the technical route, the original fusion energy technology scheme made in China is adopted by Startorus Fusion. Based on the tokamak with the most sufficient experimental data, the spherical tokamak is used to effectively improve the plasma confinement efficiency by more than 20% and greatly reduce the volume of the apparatus. The high temperature superconducting magnet technology is applied to successfully solve the problem of space limitation of the central column while enhancing the magnetic field strength. In addition, by repeating the pulse operation mode, the dependence on the current drive system with high power consumption is eliminated, and the magnetic reconnection is used to realize high-efficiency plasma heating with a heating efficiency of 80% and theoretically unlimited temperature, thus eliminating the external heating system. With the support of multiple innovative technologies, the traditional tokamak’s pain points of “high cost, long cycle and complex system” have been fundamentally solved, making the tokamak apparatus return to simplicity and efficiency, showing strong engineering feasibility and commercial strength. The prototype of the scheme has been supported by the major scientific research instrument development project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, which further verifies its scientific rationality and innovative value.
As one of the leading enterprises in the field of fusion energy in China, Startorus Fusion has formed the dual advantages of “technology + team” in the early days of its establishment. The core team members of the company graduated from the Department of Engineering Physics of Tsinghua University and have been working in the field of fusion for more than 20 years. It is not only one of the earliest teams to study controllable nuclear fusion in China, but also the first spherical Tokamak route research team in China. At present, the company has a team of more than 170 people, relying on the talent structure of “scientists+engineers+skilled workers”, to create a compound team covering the whole fusion industry chain, with both R&D innovation and engineering practice capabilities. At the same time, in order to meet the complex engineering challenges of fusion research and development, Startorus Fusion has constructed a professional and information-based management system, adopted the R&D strategy of “running one generation, building one generation and designing one generation”, synchronously promoted more than 180 pre-research, development and production projects, and realized the orderly management of complex engineering with the “IPD mode with fusion characteristics” and benchmarked the execution of the “Apollo Moon Landing” class project.
With the strong support of the talent team and efficient management system, Startorus Fusion has demonstrated excellent engineering capabilities: it took only 279 days to complete the construction of the apparatus and successfully light up the first plasma; it took 11 months to verify the technical scheme of repeated reconnection; the self-developed 100 kA-level high-current energy storage power supply and a number of electronic instruments and equipment have been successfully promoted and applied; the self-developed tokamak operating system has the ability to configure, experiment and invert key parameters such as plasma shape, position and current, and also develops AI plasma controller based on reinforcement learning to improve the accuracy of parameter control. The NTST apparatus to be built by the company is expected to become the world’s first native negative triangle spherical tokamak; the whole process technology of high temperature superconducting magnet research and development has been fully mastered, and a large number of preliminary tests are being carried out for the high temperature superconducting magnet system of the next generation device “Startorus 1”, laying a solid foundation for the follow-up technology iteration and project landing.
At present, the preliminary engineering verification has been completed, and is steadily advancing according to the company’s five-step fusion energy development roadmap. It has entered the third stage-the key research and development period to achieve energy gain Q>1, and plans to build the first fusion demonstration reactor around 2032. From technological breakthroughs to engineering landing, from team building to management efficiency, Startorus Fusion has always been a pragmatic and innovative concept, constantly breaking through the barriers of time and cost in the commercialization of fusion energy.
The high-standard roadshow platform built by Shanghai State Owned Capital Investment has effectively built a docking channel between “technology and capital”. It not only accurately matches resource-based capital for innovative enterprises with hard nuclear technology and clear industrialization path, but also actively guides social capital to converge on the future energy track of controllable nuclear fusion. Facing the future, Startorus Fusion will continue to accelerate the commercialization process of fusion energy, provide solid scientific and technological support for China to achieve the “dual carbon” goals, and contribute to igniting the future energy of mankind.
