In partnership with the University of Bristol, Astral Systems has become the first commercial fusion company to breed tritium using their own fusion reactor. This breakthrough helps address one of the biggest concerns within the fusion power industry - ensuring a healthy supply of fusion fuel - and charts a course toward solving the grand engineering challenge of breeding more tritium than is consumed by a fusion reactor.
Image Credit: Astral Systems
Through an ongoing partnership with the University of Bristol and Dr. Hugo Dominguez-Andrade, the team successfully produced and detected, in real-time, the production of Tritium from an experimental Lithium breeder blanket using their multi-state fusion reactors. This success was achieved during a 55-hour DD fusion irradiation campaign run over a full week in March.
Talmon Firestone, CEO and co-founder of Astral Systems said; “There’s a global race to find new ways to develop more tritium than what exists in today’s world - a huge barrier is bringing fusion energy to reality. This collaboration with the University of Bristol marks a leap forward in the search for viable, greater-than-replacement tritium breeding technologies. Using our multi-state fusion technology, we are the first private fusion company to use our reactors as a neutron source to produce fusion fuel.”
“This landmark moment clearly demonstrates a potential path to scalable tritium production in the future and the capability of Multi-State Fusion to produce isotopes in general.”
Professor Tom Scott, who led the University of Bristol team and is sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and UK Atomic Energy Authority, said; “This has been a highly successful collaboration and one that has achieved a historic breakthrough for the UK. The funding and support from the UK Atomic Energy Authority has been a huge enabler, and we’re now pushing to quickly optimize our system to further enhance our tritium breeding capability. This type of program really helps to underline the UK’s position as a world leader in fusion technology!”
This project was supported by the UK Atomic Energy Authority through the Fusion Industry Program. The Fusion Industry Program is stimulating the growth of the UK fusion ecosystem and preparing it for the future global fusion powerplant market.
Michael Gorley, Professor of Fusion Technology, added; “Astral should take great pride in being the first commercial fusion company to produce tritium from their fusion device. The results of this partnership between the University of Bristol and Astral Systems will help power the future of fusion fuel development and benefit the whole fusion community and form part of the pathway to humanity's fusion powered future.”
Astral is inviting other organizations to submit briefs to participate in neutron irradiation experiments enabled by their Multi-State Fusion DD reactors later on this year.