A nuclear fusion startup has reached a major milestone in its quest to commercialize clean, unlimited energy. OpenStar Technologies, based in Wellington, New Zealand, announced that it created superheated plasma at around 300,000 degrees Celsius. This marks a crucial step toward producing fusion energy.
OpenStar is developing an unconventional “inside out” reactor. It uses a powerful levitating magnet at its core. The reactor aims to achieve nuclear fusion, which fuses atoms together to produce energy using hydrogen.
This is different from nuclear fission used in current nuclear power plants, which splits atoms apart. “First plasma is a really important moment,” said Ratu Mataira, OpenStar’s founder and CEO. “It’s the moment that you know that everything works effectively.” The startup has spent two years and around $10 million to reach this point.
Fusion energy is often called the “holy grail” of clean energy. It promises near-limitless power without the long-term radioactive waste of nuclear fission. It offers a potential climate solution that can work with existing grid infrastructure.
Most fusion technology relies on a donut-shaped machine called a tokamak. It uses hydrogen gas heated to 150 million degrees Celsius—ten times the core temperature of the sun. The hydrogen isotopes fuse under this extreme heat, releasing huge amounts of energy.
Strong magnetic coils in the tokamak confine the plasma. OpenStar’s technology inverts this design. It places a magnet inside the plasma instead of confining plasma with external magnets.
Their reactor has a single, extremely powerful magnet levitating inside a vacuum chamber about 16 feet wide. It looks like a steel donut on legs. This design is inspired by the plasma in planetary magnetic fields, including Earth’s.
The concept started in the 1980s with physicist Akira Hasegawa, who studied the plasma around Jupiter.
OpenStar’s innovative fusion breakthrough
A machine based on these ideas was built at MIT and Columbia University in 2004.
But it was shut down in 2011 due to scaling issues with the available technology. OpenStar believes that by updating some of this technology and using newer types of magnets, they can overcome these challenges. Mataira says this reactor is easier and faster to engineer than a tokamak.
This allows rapid iterations and performance improvements. It also makes it easier to repair if anything goes wrong. OpenStar has already raised $12 million.
It is now seeking a much larger funding round to build two more prototypes in the next two to four years. The goal is to scale up and make the technology viable. OpenStar is part of a wave of fusion startups that have emerged recently, each pursuing different technologies.
Gerald Navratil, a professor of fusion energy and plasma physics at Columbia University, noted, “The maturity of the field is such that now private venture capitalists are willing to put up money to try to see if they can get to fusion a little faster.”
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, one of the largest commercial ventures, has raised over $2 billion. It uses high-temperature superconducting magnets within a tokamak. Other companies, like Seattle-based Zap Energy, are working on compact, scalable reactors that don’t use magnets at all.
The key question remains: when will fusion power be ready for commercial use? OpenStar estimates six years, while Commonwealth Fusion and Zap Energy predict a similar timeline. However, some experts urge caution.
The UK Atomic Energy Authority, a government body developing fusion, suggests that commercial fusion may not become a reality until the latter half of this century due to major scientific and engineering challenges. “Sometimes startups tend to be a little aggressive in what they’re promising,” Navratil said. He highlighted the gap between producing fusion energy and deploying a practical, safe, and licensed power system.
Despite the challenges, Mataira remains optimistic about the role of agile startups in speeding up the development of this promising clean power technology. “Not all of the fusion companies will be successful. OpenStar might be one of those,” he said, “but we as a society will learn faster.”
