Thread by @FLF_Nick

Read about our pilot plant design in tomorrows Telegraph! Unlocking scalability with a tritium production plant, as well as making the financing a lot easier. @Telegraph @FLFusion 🧵
telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/…

The revenue from tritium could be 5x more than that from electricity. But only if you have customers. Eventually, tritium will be easy to come by, but not at first. The pilot plant has a one-time opportunity, one valuable enough to pay for the plant.

We're also keen to announce this approach to counter some nonsense that has been written about tritium. Seriously @ScienceMagazine...
science.org/content/articl…

Another reason we're keen to talk about this is that the challenges of tritium have pushed others to look at alternative fuels. We think the physics risks far outweigh the engineering challenges. We can easily overproduce tritium with the lithium first wall.

The total inventory is also low due to the high burn fraction of inertial fusion, a common feature. And we are working with @CNL_LNC on how to get it out of the lithium. Good single pass efficiency, even at low concentrations, certainly possible.

In terms of plant costs, the biggest thing is the driver, the pulsed power machine which will launch the projectile. We anticipate our gain demonstrator will cost $1.8 / J of stored energy. For the pilot plant we are taking $6 / J.

Others in fusion are assuming major cost falls for key components. We are not. The plant version has to be rep rated and much more robust.

Scalability is key. We need hundreds of fusion power plants by 2050 if we are going to make a difference to #ClimateEmergency. This pilot plant design helps unlock #fusion power at scale. /END