Nobel Recipient Plans on Creating Laser Nuclear Fusion Reactor
Shuji Nakamura, co-founder of Blue Laser Fusion
Original source: asahi.com, July 26, 2023. Click here for the article link
SAN FRANCISCO–A start-up that a Nobel laureate co-founded plans to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor using laser technology by around 2030.
Shuji Nakamura, co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes, founded Blue Laser Fusion in Palo Alto, California, in November.
Partners include Hiroaki Ohta, a former CEO of drone maker ACSL Ltd. The start-up, which raised $25 million (about 3.5 billion yen) earlier this month, plans to work with a subsidiary of Toshiba Corp. and build a small experimental reactor in Japan in 2024.
“Japan is good at manufacturing while the United States excels in business and marketing,” Nakamura, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told The Asahi Shimbun. “We want to build a nuclear fusion reactor by combining the strengths of the two countries.”
The company plans to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor that can produce 1 gigawatt of electricity, the output of a typical nuclear power reactor. Construction would cost about $3 billion.
Blue Laser Fusion is developing new technology to trigger nuclear fusion by continuously focusing powerful laser beams on fuel. Currently, lasers can only be used for less than a second per day. In nuclear fusion, two atoms collide under high temperatures and pressure to form a new atom while releasing large amounts of energy.
Many scientists have worked on an approach to generate nuclear fusion by creating a magnetic field to confine fuel in a plasma state, but a magnetic confinement fusion reactor requires a massive financial investment.
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About Blue Laser Fusion, Inc.
Blue Laser Fusion, Inc (BLF) is commercializing a proprietary and novel pulsed laser architecture based on its high peak power, efficient, reliable and cost-effective laser optical enhancement cavity (OEC) technology. BLF is pursuing pulsed laser applications in directed energy defense to neutralize advanced threats with instant engagement of targets at the speed of light, with a deep magazine and low cost per shot compared to conventional approaches. Additionally, the company is developing GW scale, safe, secure, clean fusion energy based the proven ignition and gain demonstrated by LLNL NIF in 2022 in order to power economic growth and meet the acute and increasing demand for data centers & Al, EVs, and on-shored manufacturing. BLF has a comprehensive IP portfolio with more than 120 patents and applications internationally. Blue Laser Fusion is based in Santa Barbara, CA with additional operations in Japan.
