Startup Working with Nuclear Fusion Secures $425M Funding
Continued efforts to create “an energy source that is carbon-free, consistent, and low risk” has sparked a revived interest in nuclear energy. Current “operational nuclear power plants rely on nuclear fission, or the process of breaking atoms apart.” However, although a nearly carbon-free method of producing energy, it requires dealing with “radioactive material.” In contrast, nuclear fusion involves a smaller amount of radioactive material, has an extremely short half-life, and can be stored on-site and recycled to fuel the powerplant. Although several other innovators are working to make nuclear fusion a commercial reality, one start-up has perhaps the most ambitious timeline with expectations of putting the “first electrons on the grid by 2028.” Helion Energy, launched in 2013 and based in Washington, recently secured $425 million in a series F round of funding, increasing the company’s valuation to $5.4 billion. Helion’s process includes the use of “two different isotopes (atoms with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons) of helium and hydrogen that they confine with magnets and then compress using a strong magnetic field until a temperature of about 100 million Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) is reached causing the isotopes to fuse together and release even more energy. The new series F raise will fund Helion “through the deployment of the first-ever commercial nuclear fusion plant, having already secured an “agreement with steel produced Nucor to develop a 500 Mwe fusion power plant at one of its manufacturing facilities.” However, Carolyn Kuranz, associate professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the University of Michigan, reportedly stated that a 2028 goal ‘seems very fast’ for the fusion industry at large,” further pointing out that “there are a lot of both scientific and technical hurdles that still need to be overcome.”