The head of Realta Fusion says rising energy demand tied to data center expansion “provides a massive opportunity for fusion” even as public opinion has shifted to be more negative about these projects.
Kieran Furlong, CEO of the Madison-based fusion company, spoke during this week’s Great Lakes Fusion Energy Summit.
“I do think we want to make sure we communicate to communities when we talk about it, that this is part of the solution, this is actually how we reduce your energy cost, right?” he said. “So we could look at putting a fusion plant right next to a data center.”
As Realta Fusion and other businesses work toward commercial fusion energy production, panelists at the summit discussed how to strengthen the supply chain needed to support these efforts.
Furlong said building a supply network for fusion energy parts means having to “paint a picture for what fusion can become” to overcome initial difficulties. But the industry presents huge upside for the supply chain in the years to come, he added.
“You’re saying okay, right now I’m asking you to make a one-off, very complicated device, but if we succeed in this, we’re going to be rolling out fusion plants so fast, you’ll be scaling up your business as well,” he said.
He drew a parallel to the history of traditional nuclear fission plants as well as wind energy in more recent years, noting both saw rapid growth in the decades after being introduced as a new commercial energy source.
“These things ramp up really, really quickly,” he said. “So we’re looking at, if we can successfully demonstrate our technology and have a first fusion power plant in the mid-2030s, we’ll be rapidly building a plant every two years, if not faster. So that’s the future for suppliers.”
Wisconsin’s existing manufacturing base is already supporting fusion technology development in the state, UW-Madison Prof. Stephanie Diem told summit attendees. She has led work on the Pegasus-III fusion energy experiment within the university’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics.
Diem said the Pegasus-III team ran into “roadblocks” while trying to build the machine, facing issues with finding less expensive components and working with third-party vendors elsewhere.
“We found very quickly, not only did they not have the stock of the materials that we needed, but they didn’t have the expertise needed to build these custom parts to actually do the research that we do,” she said. “So we … reached out to the local shops, who truly saved us.”
And while some investors are betting big on the future of fusion energy itself, others are funding the supply chain networks needed to fuel the industry’s growth. Chris Good, founding partner of Induction Partners, said fusion is “a challenging place to be putting capital right now” given the long runway ahead.
“Although there are maybe only a small handful of well-capitalized fusion companies globally, I would say, there are a lot of technologies that are spinning out of fusion that are incredibly interesting, and will have a huge amount of application outside of fusion,” he said. “And that for me is a much more fertile bit of land to focus on.”
Much like with the global market for solar panel components and batteries, “China is ramping up rapidly” and investing hundreds of millions of dollars into producing high-temperature superconducting materials that are critical for nuclear fusion as well as data centers, Good said.
“Right now we’re facing exactly the same problems as we faced within photovoltaic cells, within batteries … their target is to bring down the cost of HTS way below anything that the western world can do, in an effort to prevent anyone in the West actually manufacturing it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Diem added fusion could provide greater energy security to Wisconsin, which is currently a net energy importer.
“This can provide us as a state, a path to that energy security, to power our manufacturing industry and all the other sectors that can help lead to the economic growth of the state as a whole,” she said.
See more from the summit at WisconsinEye.
