Technical Proposal

Our Technical Proposals

Controlled fusion has long been considered the ultimate solution to human energy problems for its advantages, such as almost unlimited raw materials, intrinsic safety of devices, zero carbon emissions, and no high-level radiative wastes. It will significantly reduce and even eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels, promising to be an important path to the sustainable development of us humans.

In recent years, the industrial production of high-temperature superconducting tapes and other new materials has led to the maturity of engineering requirements for the commercial application of compact controlled fusion. Against this backdrop, the founding team of the Company has drawn on the fruits and experience from the two-decade-long research to adopt a compact controlled fusion approach of repeated magnetic reconnection distinguished by multi-stroke repeated operation and heating by magnetic reconnection of the plasma current's fields, on the basis of high-field spherical tokamaks with high-temperature superconductivity. Stable fusion power output is expected to be generated within the relatively compact size efficiently and economically.

Spherical Tokamak

Spherical tokamaks are the updated version of tokamaks with an aspect ratio smaller than two that creates natural plasma elongation

Spherical tokamaks share the same simple structure and symmetricity as conventional tokamaks. However, both theoretical studies and extensive experiments have corroborated the enhanced magnetohydrodynamic stability and improved confinement performance of spherical tokamaks whose plasma beta (a fundamental measure of a magnetic field's utilization efficiency and economy) is also several times larger than that of conventional tokamaks. Spherical tokamaks enjoy more favorable scaling laws, which enables their notably better confinement performance under stronger magnetic fields. Therefore, a large energy confinement time can be obtained at moderate magnetic fields.

Thanks to their compactness, spherical tokamaks exhibit a higher proportion of plasma and higher reactor efficiency than the same-sized conventional tokamaks and accordingly gain obvious economic advantages.

Moreover, with the ability to sustain higher currents, the magnetic fields of spherical tokamaks’ plasma rings store more energy, making it easier to achieve high-power magnetic reconnection heating.

Magnetic Reconnection Heating

A Process of Magnetic Energy Conversion into Kinetic Energy of Particles

Magnetic reconnection is a process in which the topology of magnetic field lines is explosively reconfigured. It ubiquitously takes place in space and laboratory experiments where there's plasma, responsible for such physical phenomena as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and tokamak sawtooth oscillations. Due to the conservation of energy, the energy stored in magnetic fields is released and converted into the internal energy of plasma during the rearrangement of magnetic field lines.

Startorus Fusion harnesses multiple poloidal field coils in the spherical tokamak to produce two plasma rings via induction and promotes their merging into a primary plasma. In this process, magnetic fields created by the plasma rings undergo reconnection on a massive scale, heating the plasma to the temperature necessary for fusion reactions rapidly and efficiently.

Compared with mainstream tokamak approaches, this proposal requires nothing more than several sets of coils to complete the plasma heating. Therefore, it is far less complicated and difficult than high-power negative ion sources for neutral beam systems and high-power millimeter wave systems, with strong economic competitiveness and fewer operational difficulties.

Short-pulse Repeated Operation

Magnetic reconnection is repeated in an operation mode resembling multi-stroke internal combustion engines

Magnetic reconnection is a one-off process, the conclusion of which equals the stop of plasma heating. To sustain fusion power output, Startorus Fusion properly designs the power supply and renders the reactor to operate in an operation mode similar to that of multi-stroke internal combustion engines. Magnetic reconnection is thus repeated to regularly generate fusion power.

Although only one stroke does work, the control of working substance flows in this loop, combined with heat storage facilities, will ensure stable energy output. An alternative path for the same purpose would be to construct multiple fusion reactors (similar to multicylinder engines). This method averts the inevitable and unpredictable instabilities in long-pulse continuous operation, while reducing device complexity and construction costs.

High-temperature Superconductivity

High-temperature superconductivity is a key player in breaking the bottleneck of compact fusion reactors

Some metal oxides will become superconducting at high temperatures (-196℃), thus the name high-temperature superconductivity (The transition temperature is usually above 77K). As coils made from high-temperature superconducting materials allow for intense magnetic fields and high current density, they take up far less space of spherical tokamaks' center post and leave adequate room for neutron shields and other components integral to future fusion reactors to be accommodated in spherical tokamaks with stronger fields. As a result, the main obstacle to spherical tokamaks as fusion reactors is removed.