Tri Alpha Energy, Inc.

Tri Alpha Energy, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Nuclear fusion
Founded	April 1998
Founder	Dr. Norman Rostoker[1] Dr. Hendrik J. Monkhorst[2]
Headquarters	Foothill Ranch, California, United States
Key people	Dale A. Prouty[3] (CEO) Dr. Michl W. Binderbauer[4] (CTO and vice president) Dr. Toshiki Tajima[5] (CSO) Buzz Aldrin (board member) Anatoly Chubais (board member) Arthur J. Samberg[6] (board member) Frank Braun (co-founder)
Number of employees	150

Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. (TAE) is an American company based in Foothill Ranch, California created for the development of aneutronic fusion power. The company was founded in 1998 by plasma physicists Norman Rostoker^[1] from the University of California, Irvine and Hendrik J. Monkhorst^[2] from the University of Florida, as a University spin-off based on their scientific work about the Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor (CBFR).^{[7][8][9][10]}

Operation and funding

Tri Alpha Energy is a very secretive company: they have no web site, do not answer the phone, and operate in a stealth way, not publicly announcing any improvements nor any schedule for commercial production.^[9][11][12] However, they have registered various patents, frequently renewed over the years.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]} They also regularly publish theoretical and experimental results in academic journals. More recently, they seem to communicate a bit more about their project, participating in international scientific conferences and workshops.^[20][21]

As of 2014, Tri Alpha Energy is said to have hired more than 150 employees and raised over $140 million, far more than any other private fusion power research company. Main financement came from Goldman Sachs and venture capitals such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., Rockefeller's Venrock, Richard Kramlich's New Enterprise Associates, and from various people like former NASA software engineer Dale Prouty who succeeded George P. Sealy after his death^[22] as the CEO of Tri Alpha Energy. Hollywood actor Harry Hamlin, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Nobel Prize winner Arno Allan Penzias figure among the board members. It is also worth noting that the Government of Russia, through the joint-stock company Rusnano, also invested in Tri Alpha Energy in February 2013, and that Anatoly Chubais, CEO of Rusnano, became a member of the Tri Alpha board of directors.^{[7][9][11][23][24][25]}

Physics

The Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor (CBFR)

The Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor (CBFR) involves the creation, confinement, and heating of a Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC) by ion beams, inside a cylindrical, truck-sized vacuum chamber equipped with solenoids.^{[10][26][27][28]}

After years studying ion beam heating of various FRCs, most recent research by the TAE team now suggest they also test the acceleration of two compact toroids at high speed from both ends of a long reactor and their merging as a FRC in the middle, in order to improve both ion heating and confinement lifetime. They still use ion beams to further heat the FRC.^[21]

Unlike other magnetic confinement fusion devices such as the tokamak, the FRC provides a magnetic topology whereby the axial magnetic field inside the reactor is reversed by eddy currents in the plasma, as compared to the ambient magnetic field externally applied by solenoids. The FRC is less prone to magnetohydrodynamics and plasma instabilities than other magnetic confinement techniques.^[29][30][31]

The ¹¹B(p,α)αα aneutronic reaction

An essential component of the CBFR design is the use of "advanced fuels", i.e. fuels with non-neutron producing primary reactions, such as hydrogen and boron-11. For this particular reaction, the fusion products are all charged particles for which highly efficient direct energy conversion is feasible, and neutron flux and associated on-site radioactivity is virtually non-existent. So unlike other nuclear fusion research involving deuterium and tritium, and of course unlike nuclear fission, no radioactive waste is created.

Tri Alpha Energy relies on the clean ¹¹B(p,α)αα reaction, also written ¹¹B(p,3α), which produces three helium nuclei called α−particles (hence the name of the company) as follows:

1p + 11B	→		12C
12C	→		4He	+	8Be
8Be	→	2	4He

A proton (identical to the most common hydrogen nucleus) striking boron-11 creates a resonance in carbon-12, which decays by emitting one high energy primary α−particle. This leads the first excited state of beryllium-8, which decays into two low-energy secondary α-particles. This is the model commonly accepted in the scientific community since the published results accounting for an experiment established in 1987.^[32]

But Tri-Alpha Energy, Inc. thinks the reaction products should even release more energy than what is commonly envisaged. In 2010, nuclear physicist Henry R. Weller and his team from the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) showed, through experiments conducted on the intense High Intensity γ-ray Source (HIγS) at Duke University, funded by Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. and the U.S. Department of Energy,^[33] that the long forgotten, original theoretical mechanism, first proposed by Ernest Rutherford and Mark Oliphant in 1933,^[34] then Philip Dee and C. W. Gilbert from the Cavendish Laboratory in 1936,^[35] and the results of an experiment conducted by French researchers from IN2P3 in 1969,^[36] should actually be correct. The model and the experiment lead to the prediction of two high energy α-particles of almost equal energy, one being the primary α-particle and the other a secondary α-particle, both emitted at an angle of 155 degrees. A third secondary α-particle is also emitted, of lower energy. These results have been announced by Duke University, published through peer-review and presented in nuclear physics workshops under the banner "Tri-Alpha Energy Corporation".^{[37][38][20][39]} This new insight makes the p-¹¹B aneutronic fusion reaction even more interesting than before.

Inverse Cyclotron Converter (ICC)

Direct energy conversion systems previously designed for other fusion power generators, involving collector plates and "venetian blinds" or even long linear microwave cavity filled with a 10-Tesla magnetic field and rectennas, are not suitable for fusion with ion energies above 1 MeV. Tri Alpha Energy considers a much shorter device, as an Inverse Cyclotron Converter (ICC) which operated at 5 MHz and requires a magnetic field of only 0.6 tesla. The linear motion of fusion product ions is converted to circular motion by a magnetic cusp. Energy is collected from the charged particles as they spiral past quadrupole electrodes. More classical collectors would also be used for particles with energy less than 1 MeV.^[10][14][15]

The estimation of the ratio of fusion power to radiation loss for a 100 MW CBFR has been calculated for different fuels, assuming a converter efficiency of 90% for α-particles,^[40] 40% for Bremsstrahlung radiation through photoelectric effect, and 70% for the accelerators, with 10T superconducting magnetic coils:^[10]

• Q = 35 for deuterium and tritium
• Q = 3 for deuterium and helium-3
• Q = 2.7 for hydrogen and boron-11
• Q = 4.3 for polarized hydrogen and boron-11. The spin polarization enhances the fusion cross section by a factor of 1.6 for ¹¹B.^[41] A further increase in Q should result from the nuclear quadrupole moment of ¹¹B.^[31] And another increase in Q may also result from the mechanism allowing the production of a secondary high-energy α-particle.^[20][38][39]

Tri Alpha Energy plans to use the p-¹¹B reaction in their commercial CBFR for safety reasons, but also because the energy conversion systems are simpler and smaller: since there is no neutron released, there is no need to use thermal conversion, hence no heat exchanger nor steam turbine.

The "truck-sized" 100 MW reactors designed in Tri Alpha presentations are based on these calculations.^[10]

Projects

Following their "stealth mode" Tri Alpha Energy only announces a goal to build a commercial 100 MW power generator, without disclosing any schedule. Nevertheless, some prototypes are being discussed throughout their publications.

C-2

Various experiments have been conducted by Tri Alpha Energy on the world's largest compact toroid device called "C-2" (implying a former "C-1 device" may have existed, but has not been discussed), achieving up to 5 ms FRC lifetime. Results are regularly published since 2010, with papers including 60 authors.^{[21][42][43][44][45]}

C-3

No "C-3 device" is actually being used, but TAE Chief Experimental Strategist Pr. Houyang Guo revealed during a plasma physics seminar held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Engineering on April 29, 2013 that C-3 will be increased in size and heating power, in order to achieve 100 milliseconds to 1 second confinement times. He also confirmed the company has a staff of 150 people.^[46][47]

Russian cooperation

Besides Russia investment in Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. and board membership,^[25] the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk, built a powerful plasma injector, shipped in late 2013 to Tri Alpha's research facility. The device produces a neutral beam in the range of 5 to 20 MW, and injects energy inside the reactor to transfer it to the fusion plasma.^[19][48][49]

CBFR-SPS

Since 2000, Tri Alpha Energy proposes a conceptual design for the Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor Space Propulsion System (CBFR-SPS).

The CBFR-SPS is a 100 MW-class, magnetic Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC), aneutronic fusion rocket concept. The reactor is fueled by an energetic-ion mixture of hydrogen and boron (p-¹¹B). Fusion products are helium ions (α-particles) expelled axially out of the system. α-particles flowing in one direction are decelerated and their energy directly converted to power the system; and particles expelled in the opposite direction provide thrust. Since the fusion products are charged particles and does not release neutrons, the system does not require the use of a massive radiation shield.^[50][51]

Competition

Other FRC fusion developments

• Helion Energy, Inc is developing a technology that also uses merging FRC plasmoids, however does not use beams but rather purely magnetic compression.

Other aneutronic fusion developments

Two other companies are pursuing research for commercial aneutronic fusion power generation with hydrogen and boron as fuel, with different approaches:

• Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. (LPP) directed by Eric Lerner on private funds, with a machine called the Dense Plasma Focus (DPF), which uses the instabilities occurring during a plasma pinch instead of trying to prevent them.
• Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2) created by Robert W. Bussard, with the Polywell using an inertial electrostatic confinement of the plasma, funded by the U.S. Navy.

Criticism

• A few months after Norman Rostoker, Hendrik J. Monkhorst and Michl W. Binderbauer published their founding paper about the Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor in Science in 1997,^[10] a dual technical comment appeared in the same journal, written by Dr. William M. Nevins, senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Fusion Energy Sciences Program (FESP) and by Dr. Arthur Carlson from the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics. Both severely criticized the concept, Nevins noting unworkable conditions that would be caused especially by overly fast relaxation time in highly nonthermal plasmas, leading to much less fusion gain than expected; and that competitor magnetic fusion projects in local thermal equilibrium should be considered instead. As for Carlson, he pointed out inevitable energy loss due to frictional heating in the plasma, that would decrease the fusion gain under any practical value; a mean issue with an overly strong coupling of the ions through the electrons; and an equilibrium issue due to the elongated plasma geometry. The founders of Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. then claimed the right to reply and answered the review, explaining both Nevins and Carlson made over-simplistic calculations that should be replaced by more complicated but more precise Vlasov and Fokker-Planck equations, and new development in classical transport theory. For example, Carlson forgot the magnetic field. He also omitted effects that would lower the friction, and equilibrium calculations to which he referred are not applicable to FRCs. The three papers are available together online on the Science website.^[52]

• Shortly after the creation of Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. in 1998, the CBFR has been evaluated by the Office of Naval Research, which is backing the competitor aneutronic fusion project Polywell. Back then, the report concluded the equipment producing colliding beams could not be built compact enough in the context of a naval power source, and as a consequence could not be of any interest for the U.S. Navy.^[53] Nevertheless, Tri Alpha Energy showcases 50 MW modules, truck-sized reactors in their public presentations,^[11] exactly like their competitor Helion Energy.^[54]

• The CBFR has also been evaluated by the Institute for Fusion Studies of the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. The report concluded that "the proton-boron colliding beam fusion reactor is not a viable concept unless technology capable of very high energy conversion efficiencies (no less than 84%) can be developed."^[55]

See also

• Nuclear fusion
• Aneutronic fusion
• Fusion power
• Compact toroid
• Field-reversed configuration
• Dense Plasma Focus
• Polywell

References