US-based Fluor Corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Longview Fusion Energy Systems to collaborate in designing and planning laser fusion energy commercial deployment. Fluor will leverage its global experience in developing and constructing complex, large-scale facilities to provide preliminary design and engineering to support the development of Longview’s fusion-powered plant.

“The Longview power plant design is based on the recent breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility showing the world’s only experimental demonstration of fusion with energy gain,” said Longview CEO Ed Moses. “This will combine modern, efficient lasers and a patented design to replicate these conditions several hundred times a minute – similar to the repetitive pulses in a car engine but delivering over one million horsepower.”

Longview said its Fusion power plant design is based directly upon the world’s only experimental demonstration of self-sustaining fusion burn, the gateway to the commercialisation of fusion energy. “The technical basis leverages billions of dollars invested in indirect-drive inertial fusion, enabling timely delivery of the first pilot plant,” it noted. “We bring together a world-class team of partners of US-based industrial, engineering, construction, regulatory, academic, national laboratory, and utility organisations.” Longview’s planned 1,000–1,600 MW laser fusion power plants are expected to power the needs of a small city or provide process heat or power to drive industrial production of key materials.

The US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has described the National Ignition Facility (NIF) ignition experiment, in which a tiny capsule containing two forms of hydrogen is suspended inside a cylindrical x-ray oven, or hohlraum. NIF’s powerful lasers then heat the hohlraum to temperatures of more than 3m degrees Celsius, resulting in x-rays heating up and blowing off the surface of the target capsule. This causes a rocket-like implosion that compresses and heats the fuel to extreme temperatures and densities until the hydrogen atoms fuse, releasing energy. In December 2022, NIF achieved fusion ignition, a fusion first in which the energy produced exceeded the input energy.

Image courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory