Canada’s General Fusion has formed a magnetised plasma in the target chamber of its Magnetised Target Fusion (MTF) demonstration Lawson Machine 26 (LM26). General Fusion said LM26 is now forming plasmas daily as the team optimises performance in preparation for its next step – compressing plasmas with a lithium liner to create fusion and heating from compression. LM26 is expected to advance the company’s ultimate mission – to generate fusion energy for the grid in the next decade. Its results will significantly de-risk the company’s planned commercial-scale machine.
LM26 was launched on 28 February. It was designed, assembled, and operational within 16 months of project start. It is designed to achieve a series of results that demonstrate MTF: 10 million degrees Celsius (1 keV), 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), and scientific breakeven equivalent (100% Lawson criterion) in a commercially relevant way.
General Fusion’s MTF technology is designed to scale for cost-efficient power plants. It uses mechanical compression to create fusion conditions in short pulses, eliminating the need for expensive lasers or superconducting magnets. An MTF power plant is designed to produce its own fuel and inherently includes a method to extract the energy and put it to work.
“We’ve built 24 plasma injectors, created over 200,000 plasmas, and generated fusion neutrons from plasma compressions – de-risking LM26 and preparing us for this new chapter at General Fusion,” said Dr Michel Laberge, Founder and Chief Science Officer. “We’re ready to make some fusion happen in LM26!”
General Fusion CEO Greg Twinney noted: “We are doing what we do best – nimbly advancing our transformative technology and getting real results that matter. Unlike other approaches, MTF is designed from the ground up to produce practical power. As a result, our path to delivering clean fusion energy to homes and businesses following LM26 is more straightforward and streamlined than other technologies.”
General Fusion has received support from the Canadian government, including CAD69m ($48m) from the Strategic Innovation Fund since 2019, which assisted the company in attracting private capital, contributing to the CAD440m total funding raised to date. In turn, General Fusion has injected significant value into the Canadian economy. Since 2019, General Fusion has returned CAD3 to the Canadian economy through global private investment for every public dollar invested. The company has also returned approximately CAD141m dollars to the local British Columbia economy since 2019.
“General Fusion is a homegrown success story showing the value of Canadian innovation,” said Minister of Innovation, Science & Industry, François-Philippe Champagne. “We are proud to champion their progress as they advance their incredible clean fusion energy technology.” Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources Canada noted: “I am pleased to see General Fusion make significant progress in their work to foster energy innovation, increase productivity, and ensure continued British Columbian and Canadian leadership in the economy of the future.”
He added: “Through a combination of federal investment, industry collaboration, and academic research, our nuclear industry is poised to seize the global economic opportunities before us – while growing jobs in Canada and protecting our energy economy.”
When commercialised, a single General Fusion power plant will be designed to provide power to approximately 150,000 Canadian homes, and can be built close to energy demand, minimizing the need for long transmission lines or pipelines and cost competitive with other energy sources. In its current design, a General Fusion power plant will produce about 300 MWe from two 150 MWe machines running in tandem.
