Week 30 of 2024
Three nuclear energy innovation news!
⛽ Marathon Fusion (US) raises a $5.9 million Seed round led by the 1517 Fund and Anglo American with participation from Übermorgen Ventures, Shared Future Fund and Malcolm Handley. Tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, is an essential component of the fuel mixture for most fusion reactors. However, it is rare (only about ~20kg globally) and has a short half-life (~12.3 years). Marathon is refining a 40-year-old technology, known as superpermeation, that uses solid metal to filter impurities from hydrogen, thus drastically improving the efficiency of tritium breeders.
♨ General Atomics (US) manufactures a first batch of full-length (3.6m) silicon carbide composite tubes designed for pressurised water reactors. Silicon carbide has excellent properties in terms of hardness and ability to withstand extremely high temperatures (i.e. in this case, 2093°C, which is ~500 degrees higher than the melting point of zirconium alloy). It is thus an excellent candidate for fuel cladding, increasing efficiency while improving safety. This activity is taking place through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Accident Tolerant Fuel Program.
🚀 Rolls-Royce (UK) secures an additional funding of £4.8 million for its space nuclear microreactor from the UK Space Agency through the National Space Innovation Programme. Over the next 18 months, in collaboration with academic partners from the University of Oxford and Bangor University, they will work on the whole microreactor system design, underlying capabilities and key technologies.
👨🎓 Paper of the week: "Experimental results of a 330 GW impedance-matched Marx generator", Scientific Reports (2024)
👉 Experimental results of the TITAN impedance-matched Marx generator developped and built by Fuse. An impressive, peer-reviewed, milestone towards fusion.
👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!
