Fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises announced Tuesday it has signed three agreements with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to commercialize laser-based fusion reactor technology.
The partnership aims to bring the pioneering technology developed at the California-based lab to the global energy market. These deals position Inertia as a frontrunner in the race to stabilize and scale fusion energy.
LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) currently stands as the only experiment to prove that controlled fusion reactions can produce more power than the energy required for ignition. Inertia plans to leverage the breakthroughs achieved at NIF to develop its own commercial reactor.
Scaling inertial confinement
Inertia and LLNL are focusing on inertial confinement fusion. This method generates the extreme conditions necessary for fusion by compressing a fuel pellet using external forces, rather than using the magnetic fields common in other fusion approaches.
At the NIF, the process involves firing 192 laser beams into a large vacuum chamber. These beams converge on a gold cylinder known as a hohlraum, which contains a diamond-coated fuel pellet.
When the lasers strike the hohlraum, the cylinder vaporizes and emits X-rays. These X-rays blast the fuel pellet, transforming the diamond coating into plasma and compressing the deuterium-tritium fuel to trigger the reaction.
Inertia entered the market in February following a $450 million Series A funding round. The infusion of capital makes the startup one of the most well-funded players in the competitive fusion energy sector.
