Fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises has announced a breakthrough in the manufacturing of its fuel pellets, reducing the production time from several days to just a few hours. The company stated that this development allows a single fuel pellet to be made in approximately two to three hours.
This reduction in fuel filling time is considered by Inertia to be one of ten barriers the company needs to overcome to achieve its commercial power plant objectives. The process involves creating spherical diamond shells with layers of frozen and gaseous deuterium and tritium, which are then encased in gold hohlraums.
The startup developed this faster process with assistance from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, with which it has a public-private partnership. Inertia plans to use a laser four times more powerful than the NIF's, which allows for greater tolerance of imperfections in the fuel pellets, further aiding the speed of manufacturing.
Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Inertia, noted that reducing the latency of this step makes the facility smaller, faster, and more efficient. This also has the effect of reducing the amount of tritium inventory Inertia needs to hold. Tritium is radioactive, expensive at around $30,000 per gram, and globally scarce, with only about 25 kilograms stockpiled.