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nuclear fusion reaction startups have a tough row to hoe . Their mission ? To make a young kind of mogul plant that produce more get-up-and-go than it consumes — something no one has ever done with nuclear fusion reaction vim before . That imply shew their technology works , shew it can be scaled up , and convincing investors it can all be done profitably . That ’s already a tall order . But there ’s another liberal challenge that gets far less attention : where to get the fuel .
Mostfusion startupswill say that they ’ll be producing their own fuel , thank you very much . And technically , they ’re right . But that solution gloss over a fundamental detail : to make tritium — one of the key ingredient for spinal fusion — they first call for a specific isotope of lithium , one that ’s in very short supply today .
That thought dawned on Charlie Jarrott a few years ago when he was do work at fusion startup Focused Energy .
“ I realized no one is working on this supply chain stuff . There ’s a whole bunch of fusion fellowship . There is n’t a single company that is break down to make the fuel for those company , ” he severalize TechCrunch .
So Jarrott and his Focused Energy colleague Jacob Peterson decided to set off on their own , foundingHexiumwith an eye toward solving fusion ’s succeeding fuel problems .
Hexium , which has been operating in stealing , emerged on Tuesday with $ 9.5 million in cum financial support and $ 2.5 million in a credit facility , the company alone told TechCrunch . MaC Venture Capital and Refactor lead the round , with Humba Ventures , Julian Capital , Overture VC , and R7 Partners take part .
Hexium ’s key technology uses a tenner - onetime method that uses lasers to separate isotope of lithium . nuclear vapor optical maser isotope interval ( AVLIS ) was perfected by the Department of Energy in the eighties to assort uranium isotope . But after spending $ 2 billion produce AVLIS quick to produce U for atomic power plant , the Cold War ended and grand of tons of atomic fuel flooded the marketplace by style ofold Soviet weapon - grade U .
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As a answer , AVLIS sat more or less unused until a few years ago , when Hexium pick up the technology and pull off it to assort Li isotopes .
To do that , the startup will use laser that can be tuned with picometer preciseness . The ones that Hexium will use are relatively low power — “ we ’re talk tattoo removal energy , ” Peterson said — but their precision allows them to interact with a specific Li isotope .
Like most elements , Li is n’t just one configuration of protons , neutron , and negatron . In the wild , there are two stable isotopes : lithium-6 , which has three proton , three neutron , and three electrons ; and lithium-7 , which has an extra neutron . Each isotope has its own signature , so to verbalize , that ’s verbalise as a wave function . cerebrate of it like how different people ’s voices produce different wave when visualise on a computer . Hexium tune up its lasers to interact with lithium-6 ’s wave office alone .
“ It ’ll just bodge right on by a lithium-7 atom . It ’ll go unnoticed , ” Jarrott said .
To split up lithium-6 from lithium-7 , the company will shine its lasers into evaporate clouds of the metal . When the laser hit a lithium-6 molecule , it ’ll become ionize . The ionized particle will then be drawn to an electrically charged plate where it will condense into a liquid state and run down into a trough , like beads of water on the outside of an icy glass .
Hexium can then package the lithium-6 and sell it to nuclear fusion reaction companies , which will use the alloy to both breed tritium fuel and protect their pilot film and commercial reactor from harmful radiation . As for the remain lithium-7 ? It ’ll get sold to operators of conventional nuclear reactors , which use that isotope as a protective additive in cooling water system .
Over the coming class , Hexium will be using its seed funding to build and run a pilot plant . If all goes well , Hexium will replicate that design in modular fashion to produce anywhere from ten-spot to century of kg of lithium-6 .
“ We do n’t have to build a facility the size of a Costco or a football game stadium , ” Peterson said . “ We can do it in a readiness the size of a Starbucks , and we accomplish good economics at very small scale of measurement , and then we just parallelize our process . ”
Update : Included extra details on source financial backing .
