As part of the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program established in 2019 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Fusion Energy Science, $2.1 million has been awarded across nine collaborative projects between DOE national laboratories and private industry.

The funds will provide recipients with access to the expertise and facilities of DOE’s national laboratories, which will equip researchers to address critical technological challenges of pursuing fusion energy systems. The INFUSE program selected projects from members of the fusion industry for one- or two-year awards between $50,000 and $500,000 each, with a 20% cost share for industry partners.

View abstracts for these projects:

• Air Squared will design, test and evaluate a scroll roughing vacuum pump with filter and vespel tip seals for tritium handling in partnership with U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
• Commonwealth Fusion Systems will study active redox control of molten salts for fusion blankets with Savannah River National Laboratory, and under a separate award will investigate layout and performance requirements for SPARC massive gas injection with U.S. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
• General Atomics will conduct performance testing of low-resistance demountable high-temperature superconducting joints for large segmented magnets with U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
• Helicity Space will simulate the helicity drive magneto-inertial fusion concept with U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
• Microsoft will seek improved plasma control capabilities in magnetically confined tokamak systems with transformer neural networks in partnership with PPPL.
• Renaissance Americas will work on a phase diagram of lithium-lithium hydride deuterium(tritium) mixtures and implications for tritium retention and extraction with U.S. Savannah River National Laboratory.
• TAE Technologies will explore extending operational boundaries in the advanced field-reversed configuration (FRC) with PPPL, and under a separate award will work with LANL on X-ray diagnostics for C-2 W FRC plasma.