Inertia Enterprises partners with LLNL to commercialize fusion power

On Tuesday, Californian fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises announced that it has signed three agreements with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to commercialize laser-based fusion technology. The deals, which include the licensing of almost 200 patents from the lab, could give Inertia a boost over rival startups. The startup is already one of the best capitalized in the industry, having raised $450 million in Series A funding in February. Under the new agreements, which cover two strategic partnership projects and one cooperative research and development agreement, the organizations will work together to develop new lasers and improve fuel targets.

The partnership focuses on inertial confinement, which is a type of fusion that compresses fuel pellets using external force. This stands in contrast to other fusion approaches that rely on magnetic fields. The technology builds on research from the National Ignition Facility (NIF), an experimental facility at LLNL. At the NIF, 192 laser beams are fired into a vacuum chamber to converge on a hohlraum, which is a small gold cylinder containing a fuel pellet. The NIF is currently the world’s only experiment to prove that controlled fusion reactions could produce more power than they require to ignite.

Although the laser-driven reactor design was first theorized in the 1960s, building a working system has taken decades. Construction on the NIF began in 1997, and it took 25 years to reach the scientific breakeven point where a fusion reaction released more power than needed to ignite. Several startups, including Inertia, Xcimer, Focused Energy, and First Light, are attempting to turn the concept into commercial-scale power plants. The hope is that new lasers will be more efficient, lowering the energy required to ignite each fusion reaction. Inertia’s chief scientist and co-founder, Annie Kritcher, previously helped design the successful NIF experiment that achieved scientific breakeven. Her transition to the private sector was enabled by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, US legislation enabling researchers to found companies while retaining lab positions.

Why it matters

The partnership marks a significant step in moving laser-based fusion from a government-funded scientific experiment to a commercial power source. By leveraging decades of research, the collaboration could potentially solve the efficiency challenges of the 1960s-era design.