{"id":95515,"date":"2019-08-29T10:02:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T17:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/how-this-unconventional-oxford-startup-plans-to-win-the-fusion-energy-race"},"modified":"2019-08-29T10:02:32","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T17:02:32","slug":"how-this-unconventional-oxford-startup-plans-to-win-the-fusion-energy-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/how-this-unconventional-oxford-startup-plans-to-win-the-fusion-energy-race","title":{"rendered":"How This Unconventional Oxford Startup Plans To Win The Fusion Energy Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Fusion energy startup First Light Fusion<\/a> is working towards demonstrating \u201cfirst fusion\u201d before the end of the year, in their Oxford-based laboratory. If they succeed, they join only a few companies and research groups on the path to demonstrating \u201cgain,\u201d where the energy created outstrips the energy required to start the reaction, which they hope to do by 2024. <\/p>\n

Demonstrating gain is the key marker of success and the proof required for the industry to start building the commercial infrastructure to scale the technology, but no company or research group has managed it yet. The history of fusion is littered with a few high-profile failures, prompting many to believe the \u201cit\u2019s always 30 years away\u201d narrative, but with investment in the space heating up with more private investors starting to see the potential in recently-formed startups, belief in fusion is growing again. <\/p>\n

In the fusion energy race, it\u2019s arguably anybody\u2019s game among the few key global leaders of both startups and publicly-funded research efforts. There\u2019s the huge international research effort in the south of France, ITER<\/a>, looking to demonstrate first plasma\u2013not gain\u2013at the end of 2025. And there\u2019s the various startups with their different technological approaches attracting private funding worldwide, such as TAE<\/a> with $600 million funding in Los Angeles, Boston-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems<\/a> with $115 million raised in June<\/a> and General Fusion<\/a> with over $100 million based in British Columbia. In the U.K., Tokamak Energy<\/a> has raised over $50 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fusion energy startup First Light Fusion is working towards demonstrating \u201cfirst fusion\u201d before the end of the year, in their Oxford-based laboratory. If they succeed, they join only a few companies and research groups on the path to demonstrating \u201cgain,\u201d where the energy created outstrips the energy required to start the reaction, which they hope [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}