According to a recent report from ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, “policymakers should not rely on, or fund, fusion power as a core pillar of future clean energy systems” for the two primary current fusion designs (magnetic and laser inertial) because of their low “experience rates” (economies of scale).
Fusion industry professionals already pursuing commercial development discounted these findings. Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard says ETH Zurich’s authors are unaffiliated with fusion and never spoke to any industry leaders. Helion co-founder Anthony Pancotti, whose company is developing a pulsed, non-ignition fusion system, “absolutely” believes fusion can be affordable and cost-competitive with other energy sources.
Zap Energy, which has been in the fusion business for nearly a decade, last week announced it was moving in a radical new direction – building the world’s first integrated fission and fusion nuclear energy company. Zap’s principals argue that a false wall exists between fission and fusion, whereas they are two points along the same technological continuum, and developing them together accelerates deployment of both.
Zap’s core mission, according to co-founders Benj Conway, Uri Shumiak, and Brian A. Nelson, remains the commercialization of fusion using the sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch, initially developed in Japan. But, he adds, “We also believe the energy transition cannot and should not wait for fusion alone.”
To jumpstart the company’s new direction, Zap recruited Zabrina Johal from Canadian nuclear firm AtkinsRéalis to serve as CEO. Johal, a former U.S. Navy nuclear propulsion officer, will lead the development of an integrated nuclear platform that brings together fission, fusion, and hybrid systems to deliver scalable, carbon-free power.
In a recent interview, Johal said that she and Zap’s founders had been in discussions for months since they realized they all see fission and fusion as “two sides of the same coin.” It makes so much sense, she has believed for years, to integrate the two into a single business to accelerate innovation across the entire nuclear energy system.
As Conway describes it, “fission and fusion are two expressions of the same underlying physics. By integrating them into a single platform, we can move faster, reduce risk, and build a more enduring company.” Johal calls the union “the perfect marriage” and says that Zap Energy is agile – not bureaucratic – and that she can hardly wait to get up in the morning and get to work.
Zap’s strategy comes as a direct result of its work in developing its fusion power plant, with the key insight that many of the hardest problems in nuclear energy are problems of industrialization and not specific to either fission or fusion.
Both require high-temperature materials, nuclear-grade manufacturing, advanced heat-transfer systems, modular construction, and sophisticated balance-of-plant engineering. Zap’s goal is to build reactors in factories and transport them to sites where they will operate safely for decades, following the expected regulatory revisions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Johal says that artificial intelligence is driving demand and helping technology develop faster. AI also enables a greater focus on deep tech ideas and concepts because of its expedited computing and modeling capabilities. This enables running thousands of experiments in real time and picking those with the best results for further study– dramatically cutting the time to get new technologies to market.
Johal says that, rather than pursue fusion in isolation, Zap’s integrated platform is designed to deliver near-term, bankable power through compact, modular fission systems and exploit deep technology overlaps between fission and fusion, particularly in liquid-metal power systems (where Zap has developed world-leading expertise), neutron environments, and high power density design that can speed progress across both technologies.
In a Z-pinch system, plasma is produced by applying a high-voltage pulse across an anode-cathode gap of cylindrical geometry that is either pre-filled with gas or bridged by an array of (typically tungsten) wires. The plasma is imploded by the azimuthal magnetic field produced by the axially flowing discharge current, and the kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy and radiation as a hot, dense core is formed at the center.
The Japanese abandoned research on the Z-pinch process after the Fukushima incident. The chief obstacle to the technology was that the Z-pinch plasma would become unstable and thus uneconomic. Shumiak and Nelson, during their research at the University of Washington, developed the sheared-flow stabilization technique in which the plasma particles are made to move at different velocities and cannot “change lanes.”
Johal’s work has primarily focused on fission technologies, most recently AtkinsRéalis’ CANDU (Canada deuterium uranium) heavy-water reactor, but in her earlier work at General Atomics she was involved with fusion from a government program perspective. Like Zap’s founders, she too had long seen the many parallels between the two technologies.
Both, she says, share the concept of a core technology focused on high power density, similar materials, liquid metal cooling, and many business-related similarities. With the growing energy demands of data centers, AI, electrified transport, advanced manufacturing, and national energy security, the need for nuclear energy is escalating rapidly. Meeting that demand requires an expansion of nuclear energy at a scale not seen in generations.
Given the potential for both technologies to supply much needed electricity, it makes so much sense to do both. Zap chose to integrate fusion and fission into a single business, so when its fission reactors go commercial they will pull fusion closer to commercial deployment. Johal says Zap is looking to commercialize fission in the early 2030s – thanks in part to the coming Nuclear Regulatory Commission reforms — and fusion a few years later.
Longer term, working with both technologies places Zap Energy in the pole position for hybrid systems. This can involve fusion-driven neutron sources supporting advanced fission fuel cycles or waste reduction (utilizing rather than storing spent nuclear fuel), both of which have been studied in the scientific community. The Chinese have already been investing in hybrid fission-fusion systems as part of their long-term strategy.
Responding to the ETH Zurich study, Johal says she hopes all the fusion designs become commercially successful – but believes that Zap’s design will produce economies of scale thanks to their modular design.
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy