A California startup has a multipronged approach to help pay for its decade-long quest to demonstrate fusion at a commercial scale. The approach includes a novel concept to become a part-time scientific user facility funded by the Department of Energy. TAE Technologies also is soliciting tax breaks and other financial inducements from state and local governments as it decides on a site for a new $500 million test reactor. The company is reporting initial success in commercializing several technologies it has developed as it has built its experimental devices.
Based in Orange County, the 160-employee TAE is the largest of a handful of privately held startups that are pursuing alternative approaches to controlled fusion. Others include General Fusion in British Columbia, Canada; Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Tokamak Energy, near Oxford, UK.
TAE remains focused on demonstrating commercially viable grid-scale fusion by the late 2020s, says CEO Michl Binderbauer. In the meantime, it is looking for revenue sources to offset some of the company’s $50 million annual operating expenses and attract additional investors. Spin-off technologies, in particular, “create the opportunity for investors to feel we are more than a one-trick pony, that there are hedging opportunities that can happen independent of the cadence in fusion.”
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