Category: News

We will be at the 2022 ARPA-E Summit in Denver, CO next week, May 23-25! PFS will have booths for both of our projects, WIDE BAND GAP SEMICONDUCTOR AMPLIFIERS FOR PLASMA HEATING AND CONTROL and Next-Generation PFRC. This post has links to the documents that we will have at our booth both physically and on the summit mobile app!

Wide Band Gap Amplifiers (GAMOW)

ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Denver, CO

Next-Generation PFRC (OPEN 2018)

I attended the ARPA-E 2022 Fusion Annual Meeting at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco. This is a meeting for all companies that have ARPA-E grants and are working on nuclear fusion technology. Below is the poster for our Princeton Field Reversed Configuration ARPA-E OPEN 2018 grant. The poster gives an overview of the technology and the latest results from the work.

Below is our ARPA-E GAMOW poster on power electronics. It includes work by Princeton Fusion Systems, Princeton University, Qorvo and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The first panel explains the benefits of wide bandgap semiconductors. The second panel shows the latest results on Class-E amplifiers for plasma heating. The next panel shows Qorvo’s latest 2 V SiC cascodes. The final panel shows the cooling systems being designed by NREL.

The meeting had two days of interesting talks by distinguished speakers. Dr. Robert Mumgaard of Commonwealth Fusion Systems talked about their work on advanced high-temperature superconducting magnets and the theory behind high field Tokamaks. Dennis Stone of NASA discussed NASA COTS programs. Dr. Wayne Sullivan of General Atomic talked about their research programs. General Atomics has been operating a Tokamak possibly longer than anyone else. We heard talks on the Centrifugal Mirror at the University of Maryland and WHAM, the high field mirror, at the University of Wisconsin. Andrew Holland of the Fusion Industry Association gave an overview of funding resources for fusion research. He said FIA had verified 31 companies that were developing fusion power technology. This is a huge change from just a few years ago when only large government entities were conducting fusion research.

We talked to several organizations in need of high voltage and high current power electronics. We plan to pivot our GAMOW work to meet the needs of these potentially near-term customers.

The meeting had breakout sessions in which we discussed funding for fusion research and how to help gain social acceptance for nuclear fusion power. Both are challenging.

Hi! I’m Paige, and I’m an undergraduate at Princeton interested in physics and science communications. This January, I got to work as an intern here at Princeton Satellite Systems. These past few weeks, I’ve been writing about the fusion-related projects PSS is working on, such as their Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) fusion reactor concept and plans for a space propulsion engine.

My first task was to write a four-page report on the PFRC, including its design, market demand, and development timeline. I knew very little about fusion coming into this internship, so first I had to learn all I could about the process that powers the sun and has the potential to supply the earth with clean, practically limitless energy.

Various types of fusion reactors are under development by companies and coalitions all over the world; they differ in the reactors they use and their methods of confining and heating plasma. ITER, for instance, is an example of a tokamak under construction in France; it uses superconducting magnets to confine plasma so that the reaction of tritium and deuterium can occur. 

The PFRC, currently in the second stage of experiments at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, uses radio frequency waves to create a rotating magnetic field that spins and heats the plasma inside, which is contained by closed magnetic field lines in a field-reversed configuration resulting from the opposition of a background solenoidal magnetic field to the field created by the rotating plasma current. The fusion reaction within the PFRC is that of helium-3 and deuterium, which offers multiple advantages over reactions involving tritium. Compared with other fusion reactors, the PFRC is incredibly compact.  It will be about the size of a minivan, 1/1000th the size of ITER; this compactness makes it ideal for portable or remote applications.

After learning about the design and market applications of the PFRC, I created a four page brochure about PFRC, writing for a general audience. I included the basics of the reactor design and its advantages over other reactors, as well as market estimates and the research and development timeline. I went on to write four page brochures about PSS’s Direct Fusion Drive engine, which will use PFRC technology for space propulsion purposes, and GAMOW, the program under which PSS is collaborating on developing various power electronics for fusion reactors.

These past few weeks have been quite informative to me, and I realized how much I loved writing about science and technology! I learned all about fusion, and I especially loved learning the details of the PFRC reactor design. To summarize the design, research, and development of the PFRC and other technologies within four page flyers, I had to learn how to write about technology and research comprehensively and engagingly for a general audience, which improved my science communication skills.

The Space subcommittee of the Fusion Industry Association, of which we are a member, has prepared a new white paper recommending government funding for a fusion propulsion development program, styled similarly to ARPA-E and DARPA.

https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/post/fia-proposes-funding-for-fusion-for-space-propulsion

The goal is to provide funding not just for “paper studies,” but enough funding to build real hardware and start to test fusion propulsion concepts. We want the US to remain competitive in the upcoming Deep Space Race – building a human presence on the Moon, and then Mars, and beyond.

The PFRC is directly applicable, configured as Direct Fusion Drive – a variable thrust, variable specific impulse rocket in the 1 to 10 MW range. With sufficient funding, we could build a PFRC-3 to test a fully superconducting configuration’s ability to achieve fusion-relevant plasma temperatures, and a separate propulsion testbed to develop the thrust augmentation system. This is the actual mechanism to transfer the energy from the fusion products to a rocket propellant – a fusion reactor is not a rocket until you have accelerated a propellant! For more on the Direct Fusion Drive, see our related videos:

Thomson scattering is the industry standard diagnostic for measuring electron temperature, typically requiring, large, expensive, custom lasers. We are fortunate that ARPA-E has funded a team from Oakridge National Laboratory to build a portable Thomson system from commercial parts, and they are now installing and calibrating the diagnostic on the PFRC-2!

These measurements will give us critical insight on the plasma temperatures we are achieving with RMFo as a function of input power!

Princeton Fusion Systems will have two booths at the virtual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit on May 24-27. One will be for our ARPA-E OPEN 2018 grant and the other for our recent awarded GAMOW power electronics grant. We’ll be at our booths, along with our team members from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, PPPL, United SiC and Princeton University, from 1:15 to 2:30 on Monday, 3:45 to 5:00 on Tuesday and 2:30 to 4:00 on Wednesday. Please come by to talk!

We’ll also be doing a Tech Demo: Next-Generation PFRC on Monday, May 24, 2021 2:05 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.​​​​​​​ You’ll find out about our innovative compact nuclear fusion reactor work.

The Summit will have all sorts of cutting edge technology from ARPA-E companies. There will be many interesting speakers including Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The Summit will also include breakout sections where you can meet other attendees.

The ARPA-E Summit is the energy event of the year. Don’t miss out!

The ARPA-E GAMOW program is underway. We’ll have a booth at the ARPA-E Summit May 24-27. We are looking for people in the fusion industry to let us know about their power electronics needs. Please go to our GAMOW page to send us a message.