Belgium-based engineering company Tractebel has signed an agreement with UK startup First Light Fusion to provide specialist engineering expertise for a facility that will be used to demonstrate net energy gain and “help make commercial fusion a reality”.
Tractebel will help develop and deliver the “Machine 4” (M4) facility at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) site in Culham, central England. Once operational the facility will house the largest pulsed power driver in the world, 75 metres in diameter – equivalent to the size of London’s Royal Albert Hall.
First Light will use M4 to demonstrate net energy gain – the process of getting more energy out of fusion than is required to create it.
In December 2022, the National Ignition Facility in the US became the first to demonstrate “gain”. It did this through inertial confinement fusion, the same method as First Light, but using a laser to power the experiment rather than a projectile. Scientists at NIF repeated the breakthrough in an experiment on 30 July.