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 a leading fusion energy company based in Santa Barbara, CA with offices in Silicon Valley and Tokyo, Japan. The company is commercializing a proprietary and novel laser fusion technology to achieve the world’s first carbon-free, on demand, renewable, clean energy generation and to accelerate a transition to an electrified world. BLF aims to commercialize a GW scale reactor to provide power to the grid to meet the acute and increasing demand for clean energy for data centers and to support the AI revolution, for semiconductor chip fabrication facilities and chemical and steel production plants, as well as for electric vehicles and homes. The company has a comprehensive IP portfolio with more than 100 patents and applications internationally. To learn more, please visit:
