Proxima Fusion raised 7 million euros in pre-seed funding and assembled a star team to build a Stellarator.

A Munich-based startup called Proxima Fusion has entered the race to obtain clean nuclear energy by building a new sort of fusion reactor – Stellarator – exploiting the technology developed at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (MPIPP). 

The company said in a release that it has raised for this purpose an initial 7-million-euro pre-seed funding and assembled an international star team from some of the world’s most innovative institutions like Google X, IST-Lisbon, McLaren Racing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and MPIPP. 

Proxima Fusion's core team. Credit: Proxima Fusion

Proxima Fusion is actually an MPIPP spinoff and among the largest contributors are Plural, UVC Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, and the Wilbe Group.

Tokamak vs. Stellarator

There are two types of most current designs for nuclear fusion reactors - Tokamak and Stellarator. Both represent magnetic confinement fusion devices that heat up hydrogen isotopes to temperatures hotter than inside Sun-like stars. These excited particles turn into energized plasma and are run around inside a circular chamber. Powerful magnetic coils wrapping around the chamber confine the charged plasma, while atoms fuse and release intense power.

A tokamak is a type of magnetic confinement fusion device shaped like a French cruller doughnut, and is the most used prototype for nuclear fusion reactors. It is easy to design and hard to operate. Stellarators, on the contrary, have a far more complex construction, with a series of magnets spiraling around the plasma, but are easier to operate.

Design of a Stellarator-type nuclear fusion reactor. Credit: Research Gate

Proxima Fusion will build its Stellarator by exploiting the technology developed at MPIPP, where scientists and engineers have been working on a model called Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), the world's largest and most technologically advanced Stellarator. 

Compared to other beneficiaries of funding for nuclear fusion projects, the amount Proxima Fusion has received in the first round is not much, so there’ll be a new campaign to consolidate its budget, given the company’s ambitious goal to put the first nuclear fusion power plant online during the 2030s.

Nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars, promises to be a source of safe, clean and plentiful energy that would replace the fossil fuels for good. The most notable nuclear fusion experiments are conducted currently in the United States, China, Japan, France, South Korea, and Russia.