Photo Credit: Focused Energy
A San Francisco-based energy company is super focused on its task of providing clean, laser-based energy to Americans, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Focused Energy, a German-American company that arrived in the California Bay Area by way of Austin, Texas, has announced plans to build a $65 million facility. Inside the facility, the company will get to work on building lasers that can burn as hot as the sun in order to create power for people’s homes.
Focused is one of the small number of companies working on laser fusion technology.
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Nuclear fission technology, which has existed for decades, is when energy is generated by splitting atoms apart. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, creates power by slamming atoms together. This mimics the same process that powers the sun.
Scientists have long thought of nuclear fusion as the “holy grail” of clean energy, theorizing that if they get it to work right, it could supply virtually unlimited, clean, renewable energy. Unlike fission, fusion technology could also work without creating radioactive waste.
Focused, for its part, said that once fully operational, its facility would be capable of powering the entire city of San Francisco on “three soda cans” worth of fusion fuel per day.
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“If humanity’s first foray into energy was the discovery of fire, harnessing fusion will be its culmination,” said Focused Energy CEO Scott Mercer. “We have the power to harness the universe’s own source of energy within the next decade. And we will all be far better for it.”
To that end, Focused has received $175 million in private and public funding, along with grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
If Focused or any of the similar companies is successful at delivering fusion energy technology at scale, it could certainly make a big difference in our society’s efforts to transition away from harmful, polluting dirty energy sources like gas and oil.
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