No investors in Europe
German nuclear fusion startup goes to the USA
08/07/2023, 2:50 p.m
Actually, the Munich energy startup Marvel Fusion would have liked to stay in Germany. But they only find solvent investors in the USA. There they want to advance the development of a nuclear fusion power plant.
The Munich energy startup Marvel Fusion now wants to advance the development of a nuclear fusion power plant in the USA. The company and the university announced that “the most powerful short-pulse laser system in the world” will be built on the Colorado State University campus by 2026. “With the new plant, the company can significantly accelerate the development of its own fusion concept into a power plant.”
The facility, co-financed by the US Department of Energy, allows new experiments and meets “all the requirements to demonstrate power plant operation,” said Marvel Fusion. University President Amy Parsons said, “The project will bring significant long-term economic benefit and reputation to Fort Collins and the State of Colorado.”
In nuclear fusion, atomic nuclei are not split, but fused together like in the sun. Theoretically, climate-friendly energy can be generated in a fusion power plant without nuclear waste and without the risk of a reactor catastrophe – but in practice this is still very difficult. At the end of last year, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA reported a breakthrough: for the first time, more energy was generated than consumed in a fusion experiment.
“Would you like to have built them in Germany”
Marvel Fusion founder Moritz von der Linden told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” that the demonstration plant in Colorado will cost 150 million euros and should show that nuclear fusion can be an efficient, clean energy source that can be used on a large scale. “We would also have liked to set them up in Germany,” but European investors would have waved them off. “In America, in addition to the state, people like Bill Gates, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and Jeff Bezos from Amazon are involved in fusion research with huge amounts,” said von der Linden and criticized: “Here everyone always looks to the state!”
Marvel Fusion plans to build a prototype of a commercial fusion power plant in about ten years, which should cost several billion euros and could be co-financed by the first customers. By 2045, the company hopes to be able to make a major contribution to the energy supply.