Blue Laser Fusion
🇺🇸 Santa Barbara, US · Founded 2022 · Active
Blue Laser Fusion is a company in Santa Barbara, California, with operations in Japan, founded in 2022 by the Nobel physics laureate Shuji Nakamura, who invented the efficient blue LED. It is developing a pulsed fibre laser built around an optical enhancement cavity, which stores light and stacks many pulses into one, and it pursues two markets: directed-energy weapons for defence and laser-driven fusion power. Its current site describes a 1 GW fusion plant concept driven by 5-megajoule laser pulses on deuterium–tritium targets, citing the ignition achieved at the National Ignition Facility in 2022 as its basis, and lists a Department of Energy INFUSE award. It says it holds more than 120 patents and applications.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Laser ICF, direct drive
- Fuel
- Deuterium–tritium
- Role
- Fusion developer
Terms
- Laser ICF, direct drive
- Laser beams strike the fuel capsule directly. More efficient than indirect drive in principle, but far more sensitive to how evenly the beams are applied.
- Deuterium–tritium
- Lowest ignition threshold; 80% of energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons. The reference fuel for every near-term net-gain claim.