Nuclear fusion conjures images of massive reactors or banks of dozens of large lasers. Avalanche founder and CEO Robin Langtry thinks smaller is better.
For the last few years, Langtry and his colleagues Landslide has been working on what is essentially a desktop version of nuclear fusion. “We use small scale to learn quickly and quickly,” Langtry told TechCrunch.
Fusion power promises to supply the world with clean heat and electricity, if researchers and engineers can overcome some troubling challenges. At its core, fusion power seeks to harness the power of the Sun. To do that, the fusion starter must know how to heat and compress the plasma long enough to fuse the atoms in the fuse, releasing energy in the process.
Fusion is an unbelievable industry. The physics are challenging, the material science is advanced, and the power requirements can be enormous. Parts must be machined with precision, and sizes are usually large enough to obviate rapid fire experiments.
Some companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) use large magnets to contain plasma in donut-like tokamaks, others compress fuel pellets by shooting them with powerful lasers. Instead, avalanches use very high voltage electric currents to draw plasma particles into orbit around electrodes. (It also uses some magnets to keep it in order, although they are not nearly as powerful as the tokamak.) When the orbit tightens and the plasmas accelerate, the particles begin to smash into each other and fuse.
That approach has won over some investors. Avalanche recently raised another $29 million in an investment round led by RA Capital Management with participation from 8090 Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Founders Fund, Lowercarbon Capital, Overlay Capital, and Toyota Ventures. To date, the company has raised $80 million from investors, a a relatively small number in the world of fusion. Other companies have raised several hundred to several billion dollars.
Place-based inspiration
Langtry’s time at Jeff Bezos-backed space technology company Blue Origin influenced how Avalanche tackled the issue.
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“We’ve learned that using this SpaceX ‘new space’ approach is that you can iterate quickly, you can learn quickly, and you can overcome some of these challenges.” said Langtry, who worked with co-founder Brian Riordan at Blue Origin.
Going small allows the Avalanche to accelerate. The company has testing changes to the device “sometimes twice a week,” something that would be challenging and expensive with large devices.
Currently, the Avalanche reactor is only nine centimeters in diameter, although Langtry said the new version will grow to 25 centimeters and is expected to produce about 1 megawatt. This, he says, “will give us a significant bump in the confinement time, and that’s how we’ll get a plasma that has a chance to be Q > 1.” (In fusion, Q refers to the ratio of power in to power out. When it is more than one, the fusion device is said to pass the breakeven point.)
The experiments will be conducted at Avalanche’s FusionWERX, a commercial testing facility that is also leased to competitors. In 2027, the site will be licensed to handle tritium, an isotope of hydrogen used as fuel and essential to many of the initial plans for fusion to generate power for the grid.
Langtry wouldn’t commit to a date when he hopes Avalanche will be able to produce more power than fusion devices, a milestone in the industry. But he thinks the company is on the same timeline as competitors like CFS and the Sam Altman-backed Helion. “I think there will be a lot of exciting things happening in fusion in 2027 to 2029,” he said.