Update |
made strategic investments as part of their wider strategies.
The four challenges to commercialisation
Translating energy gains proven in the lab to a commercial scale is a complex, long-term programme. Success means overcoming four major challenges: 1. Technological readiness: scaling all components to ensure they are mature and proven at scale.
2. High circulating power requirements: achieving a high enough energy gain to power the plant’s systems while generating energy.
3. Power plant scaling/building costs: fusion plants will require the creation of often new,
resilient and specialised components that are suitable for commercial use.
4. Regulatory frameworks/public acceptance: currently fusion regulations are not fully formulated, while the industry needs to convince the public around fusion’s safety and cost benefits.
None of these challenges can be solved in isolation and success requires companies and governments to take a gradual approach. They must build capabilities and technology readiness over time, scale manufacturing capacities from one-off to batch mode, and engage with regulators and the general public. This requires the development of an entire fusion ecosystem, with technology vendors, research/academic institutions, manufacturers, energy companies,
industrial players/customers, investors, governments, and regulators all working together.
Embracing the fusion opportunity An increasingly electrified world requires clean sources of baseload power as fossil fuel generation is switched off. Thanks to recent scientific breakthroughs, increased investment and government support, fusion energy has the potential to step up to provide this cost- effective, green, always-on power. Momentum is accelerating and while there are challenges to be overcome, a concerted, ecosystem approach should mean that the first fusion energy power plant is likely to connect to the grid within 20 years, providing a route to potentially limitless, safe and clean power.
QI stellarators: a better route to commercial fusion?
Proxima Fusion, a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), which describes itself as “Europe’s fastest-growing fusion energy startup”, has published a new peer-reviewed paper announcing what it claims to be “the world’s first integrated concept for a commercial fusion power plant designed to operate reliably and continuously.” Published in Fusion Engineering and Design, the Stellaris concept is said to be “a major milestone for the fusion industry”, with “quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators now emerging as the most promising pathway to a commercial fusion power plant,” according to Proxima Fusion.
The Stellaris concept builds on results obtained from IPP’s Wendelstein 7-X (W7- X) fusion research facility, a QI stellarator experimental prototype located in Greifswald, eastern Germany. This has received over €1.3 billion in funding from the German federal government and the European Union.
The Stellaris development is the result of a public–private partnership between Proxima Fusion engineers and IPP scientists. Proxima Fusion says it has been “building on the institute’s cutting-edge experimental and theoretical work, with a strong engineering workforce from the likes of Google, Tesla, McLaren Formula-1, and SpaceX.”
“The path to commercial fusion power plants is now open,” says Dr Francesco Sciortino, co- founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion. Stellaris is said to be both smaller and more powerful than any stellarator power plant designed to date, making use of the much stronger magnetic fields that are enabled by high temperature superconductor (HTS) based magnets.
Computer generated rendering of Wendelstein 7-X plasma vessel, superconducting stellarator magnet coils, planar magnet coils, support structure and cryostat. Source: Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Smaller reactors can be built more quickly, provide more efficient power generation, and will eventually be more cost-effective in terms of both construction and operation. The Stellaris concept also makes use of only currently available materials, says Proxima Fusion, meaning it will be buildable by expanding on today’s supply chains. A simulation-driven engineering approach has enabled rapid design iterations, leveraging advanced computing, with Stellaris described as “the first QI-stellarator-based power plant design that simultaneously meets all major physics and engineering constraints, as demonstrated through electromagnetic, structural, thermal, and neutronic simulations.” The integration of physics and engineering constraints within a single optimisation framework allows Proxima to “now take a bold leap with its demonstration stellarator, Alpha, as opposed to building several devices with incremental improvements over a period of decades.”
The groundbreaking technical features of the Stellaris design include a neutron blanket concept that is adapted to the complex geometry of stellarators.
14 | May 2025|
www.modernpowersystems.com
Overview of Stellaris. Pictured here are the non-planar modular coils (green), the support structure (light grey) and the cryostat (outermost grey shell). The red region indicates the blanket. Blue ‘stripes’ around the (pink) plasma show the location of the magnetic islands which are used to divert the plasma at the edge. One sector-splitting interface is shown in blue. The inner radius of the cryostat is 6.5 m, its outer radius is 18 m. Source: Proxima Fusion/Fusion Engineering and Design
Thanks to its Stellarator Model Coil (SMC) magnet demo scheduled for 2027, Proxima Fusion says it “will fully de-risk HTS technology for stellarators.”
It then plans to demonstrate that stellarators are capable of net energy production with its demo stellarator, Alpha, in 2031, and – exhibiting no lack of ambition – aims to “deliver limitless, safe, clean fusion energy to the grid in the 2030s.”
Stellarator vs tokamak Stellarators and tokamaks both employ ring- shaped plasma-containing magnetic fields. But tokamaks produce part of these fields by means of an electric current flowing in the plasma, while stellarators, in contrast, form the magnetic field cage solely by means of external coils. Stellarator magnets have complex shapes because they are designed to create twisted magnetic fields that confine plasma without relying on plasma current.
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