US startup Zap Energy has brought fusion energy closer to reality by generating 1.6 GPa plasma pressures inside its FuZE-3 device.
A US startup has just reached a new milestone in the race for fusion energy after hitting plasma pressures comparable to those found deep beneath Earth’s crust with its Fusion Z-pinch Experiment 3 device.
Researchers at Seattle’s fusion power developer Zap Energy registered plasmas with electron pressures reaching 830 megapascals , or approximately 1.6 gigapascals total.The results, presented this week at the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Long Beach, California, are the highest-pressure performance ever recorded in a sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinch.According to the company, the outcomes represent an important marker on the path to scientific energy gain, or Q>1.“There are some big changes in FuZE-3 compared to Zap’s previous systems, and it’s great to see it perform this well so quickly out of the gate,” Colin Adams, Zap Energy’s head of experimental physics, noted.Record-breaking pressuresUnlocking fusion energy requires extremely hot and dense plasma. The higher the pressure, the more fusion reactions occur and the more energy is produced.Even though some fusion devices push for maximum pressure and others focus on longer confinement times, Zap Energy’s sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinches aim to balance both compression and confinement.FuZE-3 is the US company’s newest and most advanced fusion platform. It is also the firm’s first device to incorporate a third electrode to separate the forces that drive plasma acceleration and compression.The researchers’ latest measurements showed electron pressures reaching 830 megapascals. When both electrons and ions are accounted for, the total plasma pressure approached 1.6 gigapascals .This is about 10,000 times atmospheric pressure at sea level, or 10 times the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. These extreme conditions were sustained for about one microsecond and measured using optical Thomson scattering, which is the gold standard for plasma diagnostics.The recent FuZE-3 campaigns featured multiple repeated shots achieving electron densities between 3 and 5 x 1024 m-3 per cubic meter, and electron temperatures exceeding one kilo-electronvolts . This is equivalent to more than 21 million degrees Fahrenheit.Pushing fusion energy limitsZap Energy’s approach, known as sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion, differs from massive tokamaks or laser-driven reactors. The FuZE-3 device relies on a slender plasma column stabilized by high-speed flow, instead of magnetic coils or high-power lasers.This design allows extreme pressures and temperatures to be achieved in a far more compact system. FuZE-3 was built to reach higher triple product values, a key fusion metric that combines plasma density, temperature, and confinement time. The device uses three electrodes and two capacitor banks.“The capability to independently control plasma acceleration and compression gives us a new dial to tune the physics and increase the plasma density,” Adams said. “The two-electrode systems have been effective at heating, but lacked the compression targeted in our theoretical models.”Although the new results are still preliminary, they represent another step toward scientific energy gain, also known as Q >1. This is the point at which a fusion system generates more energy than it consumes.“We’re really just getting started with FuZE-3,” Ben Levitt, Zap Energy’s R&D vice president, stated. The company plans to continue scientific campaigns on FuZE-3 through the coming months while preparing the next-generation FuZE platform, slated to begin operation this winter.“It was built and commissioned just recently, we’re generating lots of high-quality shots with high repeatability, and we have plenty of headroom to continue making rapid progress in fusion performance,” Levitt concluded in a press release.
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