Pacific Fusion emerged from stealth in October and created a splash with a founding team led by a $900 million Series A and scientists most widely known for their work on human genome projects.
Now, the startup is revealing the physics that underpin the plans to build a fusion reactor.
“We are publishing a detailed technical roadmap,” Will Regan, co-founder and president of Pacific Fusion, told TechCrunch. “We will lay out the details of the system that (the National Ignition Facilities) can benefit 100 times more than what they can do with about a one-half of the cost.”
The bet is long-term. The company said the first commercial reactor is about 10 years away.
Pacific Fusion follows similar fusion capabilities as the National Ignition Facility (NIF). This is the energy research program that first demonstrated that a controlled fusion reaction can release more energy than is required to initiate a reaction. This approach is called inertial confinement. In other words, fuel is squeezed down until the atoms begin to fuse together and release a huge amount of electricity in the process.
However, when NIF uses lasers to compress fuel pellets, Pacific Fusion plans to send a large number of electrical pulses to the target, creating a magnetic field where the shell that envelops the fuel is compressed in about 100 nanoseconds.
Power generation is a 156 Impedance Matchmarx Generator (IMG) or pulsar module, a power source invented by co-founder Keith Lechien and others. Together, the pulsar module produces 2 terawatts in 100 nanoseconds. “That’s about four times the average power of the US grid,” Regan said.
Each pulsar module contains a repeating element. There are 32 “stages” which are essentially metal rings surrounded by 10 “bricks.” Each brick consists of a switch, a short-term energy storage device, and two capacitors.
Accurate timing is required to ensure that electricity from each brick reaches the fuel pellets simultaneously. A single capacitor throws away all the energy in about 100 nanoseconds, says Regan. “The Marx Generator version of IMG is essentially a fast pulse,” he said. “This timing is consistent throughout the system, because it’s synchronizing the entire system.”
When the bricks are ejected, electricity travels through the cables from each pulsar module to the reaction chamber, keeping them in a vacuum. So the surge converges around the target and applies a squeezing electromagnetic force until fusion occurs.
So far, Pacific Fusion is “a few months ahead of schedule,” said Regan, who has developed the required simulation models and built a completed prototype of the bricks and stages. This will allow the company to unlock the next part of its $900 million funding round. This directs you to the construction of a complete pulse module or IMG.
“Once you do that, you basically carbonize the carbon 150 times to make the whole system,” he said.
Large rounds of funding cannot be accessed at once by Series A standards. It is built to pay continuously as the company reaches certain milestones. Although not in other sectors, large rounds dolled out in tranches are common in biotechnology. Credits from the startup’s fundraising model go to General Catalyst, co-founder and CEO Eric Lander, and co-founder COO Carrie von Muench investors who are familiar with their use at Biotech.
Pacific Fusion recently hired Sachindesai as the general counsel, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. Desai previously served in the same abilities at his competitor Hellion.
Fusion does not have the same regulatory concerns as nuclear fission. I received some clarity about the passage of the Preliminary Act in July 2024.
However, there are still many unanswered questions due to the absence of commercial fusion reactors.
“It’s important that we’re part of the conversation because we’re always in the room and rules are made,” Regan says. “It’s going to be a continuous process.”