Nuclear fusion startup Xcimer Energy has launched its Phoenix laser system. The company told TechCrunch that this facility is currently the world's largest privately owned laser device and will be used to validate its fusion power generation pathway and prepare for the construction of subsequent prototypes.
Benchmarking national ignition devices
Xcimer employs an inertial confinement fusion approach, drawing inspiration from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the United States. In December 2022, the NIF completed a crucial experiment demonstrating that the energy released by a controlled fusion reaction can exceed the energy required for ignition.
The NIF method uses 192 laser beams to irradiate an extremely small fuel target. The lasers first act on a gold outer target, then are converted into X-rays to compress the internal fuel until the atoms fuse and release energy.
Phoenix is used for device verification.
Phoenix is an intermediate step for Xcimer towards power plant solutions. The system uses excimer laser amplification technology, a technique commonly found in semiconductor manufacturing, but the company is using a higher-power version.
The company claims that this krypton-fluorine laser system can output more than 1 kilojoules of energy at full power, with the core device measuring 38 meters in length. According to them, this is the world's largest privately owned laser system, but it still falls significantly short of the levels required for commercial power plants.
Targeting commercial use in the mid-2030s
Xcimer predicts that the energy scale required for commercial fusion power plants could exceed 12 megajoules. The envisioned future power plants will be equipped with two lasers, emitting energy in microsecond-level pulses, and then delivering the energy to the fuel target in nanosecond-level pulses via a compression system.
The company hopes to complete a prototype by 2028, followed by the construction of a larger system, and aims to generate enough electricity to at least cover its own energy consumption. Its target timeframe for its first commercial-scale fusion power plant is the mid-2030s.
