A total of eight projects in the private sector focused on the development of fusion energy have recently been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for collaboration with the National Laboratories and awards of between $50,000 and $500,000 each.
The Innovation Network for Fusion Energy program (INFUSE), established in 2019, will provide the awards in conjunction with its sponsor, the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, a Dec. 13 DOE press release said. The program awards private-public research partnerships in hopes of accelerating U.S. fusion energy development.
“This series of selections marks the conclusion of the third year of the INFUSE program, which continues to draw in new applicants every call,” DOE Associate Director for Fusion Energy Sciences James Van Dam said in the release. “Support for INFUSE remains strong in the private fusion sector and we anticipate growing interest as the program continues to evolve moving forward.”
The six companies chosen for awards are Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Energy Driven Technology LLC (EDT), General Atomics, Magneto-Inertial Fusion Technologies, Renaissance Americas, and Silver Fir software, the release said. CFS and EDT both won two awards.
Each award will last for one or two years with a 20% cost-share for industry partners, the release said. The awards also “provide companies with access to the leading expertise and facilities of DOE’s national laboratories to assist in addressing critical scientific and technological challenges in pursuing fusion energy systems.”
“Some of these recent awards are focused on technology development, material testing, and machine learning,” Ahmed Diallo, deputy director of INFUSE and a fusion scientist at DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, said in the release. “This focus highlights the industry’s needs to accelerate the development of carbon-free fusion energy on the electricity grid – one of the main of objectives of COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference.”
Fusion energy science focuses on the development of an energy source using thermonuclear reactions. “Fusion occurs when two nuclei combine to form a new nucleus. This process occurs in our Sun and other stars,” a description on the DOE website said.
