Projects that revolutionize thermonuclear fusion

In 2018 75 projects of new fusion machines and fission reactors were reported. Concerning thermonuclear fusion, there are 2 kinds of projects, those that revisit concepts that were left aside by national laboratories and those that intend to complete present works on ITER by proposing innovating technologies. The discovery in 2015 of a new alloy allowing the construction of superconducting coils operating at higher temperatures and generating more intense magnetic fields has opened the way to more compact machines than ITER. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Lockheed Martin and Tokamak Fusion are enterprises working on such machines. To illustrate the second type of projects, there is the Canadian start-up General Fusion that is studying a concept that relies on the use of an array of pistons driving a pressure wave to compress liquid metal rotating around a 3 million degrees plasma. The compression of the liquid metal heats the plasma triggering the fusion of hydrogen nuclei. Most of the projects are financed by the private sector. (A.C.)