Zap Energy’s Post

As in past years, we recommend reading this annual report all the way to the end.

A new publication, led by our collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, details the first measurements of plasma pressure profiles inside of #FuZE. This is the third in a series of three papers that highlight gold-standard Thomson scattering data and each provides insights that show increasing performance for SFS Z-pinches, and in doing so bring us closer to a platform for fusion energy that's practical and commercially appealing. As lead author and Zap collaborator Clément Goyon explains in this writeup from LLNL: “The ability to accurately measure and understand plasma conditions is crucial for optimizing fusion performance and advancing this transformative energy technology." The results were supported by an ARPA-E funded diagnostics collaboration, and taken as a set of three papers (each linked below), the results form a fantastic data set we've been building on since it was first collected. Paper one (Banasek et al.) describes the methodology and initial intermediate plasma temperature measurements; paper two (Levitt et al.) is our recent PRL showing elevated electron temperatures up to 1-3 keV coincident with neutron production; and finally this third paper (Goyon et al.) shows both electron temperate and density measurements, enabling the measurement of plasma pressure profiles and better understanding of triple product performance. 1. https://lnkd.in/gyf3NU2M 2. https://lnkd.in/g_R_Q5Ag 3. https://lnkd.in/g5eDK3Wv

Pleased to host Washington Governor Jay Inslee, members of his staff, State Representatives Mary Fosse and Julio Cortes, and officials from the Department of Health at our facilities in Everett today. Under Governor Inslee our state has emerged as an international focal point of fusion development, and earlier this year he became the third governor to sign legislation formally recognizing fusion as a source of clean energy and providing incentives tied to its development. #Fusion #FusionPower #CleanEnergy

If you follow our team, hopefully you won't be surprised to hear that we stand behind the principles outlined in this recent letter from Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Publishing peer-reviewed results is critical at this stage, and in our own best interests at that.

Thank you SF Deep Tech Week for giving Zap's Derek Sutherland a chance to help spread the word about our fusion energy developments (and, if you look closely, a platform to educate the audience on "sausage" and "kink" plasma instabilities).

Last week ARPA-E held their annual #fusionenergy meeting here in Seattle, providing the opportunity to update the broader fusion community on our progress and take a short break from R&D to give a few visitors a peek inside the lab.

The U.S. milestone-based public-private fusion program is fundamentally different from the way fusion has been funded over the past several decades and Zap has officially signed the contract to participate. It needs to be bolder, but it’s an important start. https://lnkd.in/ewrVyjdZ

No one gets into fusion because it's easy. Our new video looks inside Zap’s facilities to show what motivates our team to take on fusion's challenges, and what makes our technology different - check it out. #Fusion #FusionPower #FusionEnergy #PlasmaPhysics #PlasmaScience #CleanEnergy #CleanTech #DeepTech Brian Nelson Uri Shumlak Ben Levitt Alexandra [AJ] Kantor Matthew Thompson Derek Sutherland Ryan Umstattd

Another new publication from one of our diagnostics collaborators - this one from Amanda Youmans of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Portable and Adaptable Neutron Diagnostics for Advancing Fusion Energy Science (PANDA-FES) team: https://lnkd.in/gCbTx2Pi This PANDA isn’t interested in bamboo, PANDA-FES is a traveling set of instruments that detect the neutrons produced by fusion reactions in devices like Zap’s Fusion Z-pinch Experiment (FuZE) to provide an array of important information about our plasmas, including the total number of neutrons they generate and details about the plasma's shape, stability and duration.