Lockheed Martin reveals plans to build small-scale fusion reactor

Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest aerospace and military companies has announced plans to build a fusion reactor small enough to fit on the back of a truck.

The head of the project, Thomas McGuire, said his secretive US-based Skunk Works team is bringing the project into the sunlight to find potential government and industry partners to support the four-year-old effort to build a 100 megawatt reactor two metres wide by three metres feet long.

There was a cool response from scientists when the announcement was made at the Fusion Energy conference in St Petersburg last week.

There are huge obstacles to achieving fusion which, like the sun and the stars, derives energy from the coalescence of atomic nuclei, and no hard evidence that Lockheed has overcome them. The coveted goal of "breakeven", where fusion yields as much energy as it consumes, has not yet been reached by scientists, despite decades of effort.

The common reaction in the corridors of the Fusion Energy conference was faint bewilderment. Many felt Lockheed’s method, which is smaller and more scalable than competing concepts, lacked detail.  

Eschewing the traditional tokamak design: Skunk Works’ proposed reactor plan

“Without releasing more technical information, the dust will have to settle before we can give a real assessment,” said David Campbell, chief physicist for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France.
“At the moment, it is not obvious to me what magnetic configuration Lockheed is using and what specific achievement they are claiming which justifies the claims made,” he told Science|Business.

The Lockheed team has reportedly done over 200 firings with plasma but has not shown any data on the results. So far it has only released pictures, diagrams, and some commentary, available here. The company is talking about how fusion reactors could one day power ships and planes.

With several patents pending for the technology, Lockheed said it plans to build and test the first version of the reactor within a year, and have a prototype ready in five years. The company’s fusion plan is part of a ramping up of investment in energy projects such as wind, solar and tidal energy, over the last few years.

A number of other companies in the US and Canada have joined Lockheed on the trail of compact fusion reactor designs. These include Tri-Alpha, a company based near California; Helion Energy, Washington; Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in New Jersey and General Fusion, Vancouver.