Week 40 of 2024

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

🔥 The first gyrotron has been delivered for the WEST facility at the CEA's Cadarache nuclear research centre in France. WEST, previously known as Tore Supra, is the acronym for W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak. The gyrotron, mnufactured by Thales, is part of a plasma heating system leveraging on electron cyclotron resonance.

🍧 Acceleron Fusion, Inc. closes a $15m round (out of a targetted $23.7m). The young startup focuses muon-catalysed fusion. Basically, muons are negatively charged particles with a mass 207 greater than electrons. As muons bombard hydrogen isotopes, they replace electrons in some atoms but on orbits much closer to the nucleus, thus lowering the barrier atoms need to fuse.

🤑 Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-lead by Peter Thiel, invests in a stealth startup that would have developped a new method for producing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). This fuel is essential for advanced reactors and small modular reactors, with production currently dominated by Russia. Who are you?

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: "Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear", a report by the U.S. Department of Energy (2024).

👉 US nuclear capacity has the potential to triple from ~100 GW in 2024 to ~300 GW by 2050.