Helical Fusion
🇯🇵 Tokyo, JP · Founded 2021 · Active
Helical Fusion is a Japanese fusion start-up headquartered in Tokyo. It was founded to commercialise research on helical fusion reactors, a Japanese form of the stellarator in which twisted coils create a magnetic cage that can hold plasma steadily, carried out at the National Institute for Fusion Science. Its development plan, the Helix Program, centres on high-temperature superconducting magnets, for which it is developing its own cable, and a combined blanket and divertor system to extract heat and handle exhaust. The company's design for a steady-state reactor was published in the journal Physics of Plasmas in 2023. It is a member of the Fusion Industry Association.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Stellarator
- Fuel
- Deuterium–tritium
- Role
- Fusion developer
Terms
- Stellarator
- Confinement produced by external coils twisted into complex three-dimensional shapes, so no net current has to be driven through the plasma. That removes the disruptions a tokamak's plasma current can cause and allows continuous operation, at the price of coils that are far harder to design and build.
- Deuterium–tritium
- Lowest ignition threshold; 80% of energy in 14.1 MeV neutrons. The reference fuel for every near-term net-gain claim.