5 Questions With… HB11 Energy
HB11 Energy featured in our ‘5 Questions With…’ interview in the June 2024 issue of the Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly.
Each issue, we ask a senior member of a private fusion company these 5 questions:
- What's your approach and how does it work?
- Why is it unique/what's the USP?
- What are your milestones to commercial fusion—where are you now and what is
your timeline? - How are you backed financially? What have you raised and how much do you
estimate you will need to raise to achieve your goals? - What are the key strategic partnerships that you have in place or in planning that
will get you to commercial fusion?
Plus a couple of personal ones.
Here is a sneak-peek of some of the things HB11 Energy revealed.
1. What is the approach of HB11 Energy?
HB11 Energy is working on inertial confinement fusion using fuel of hydrogen and boron (p-11B). We see laser boron fusion as the economically viable and globally deployable path for fusion energy.
2. Why is the HB11 Energy approach to fusion unique?
HB11 Energy believes laser boron fusion is the best option for economic, globally deployable fusion energy. We believe it will be the first type of fusion plant to be built hundreds of times. This is because of the maintenance-friendly fusion chamber assembly, non-fragile drivers and resilient fuel supply chain. This is a plant that can run reliably for >50 years without a need for extended shutdown periods for maintenance.
Leader Insight
Sergey Pikuz leads HB11 Energy’s Technology Programme.
How long have you been working on fusion?
My two years at HB11 Energy in Sydney have followed twenty years of High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) with optical and XFEL lasers, with so much travel to international user facilities that I describe my team as “nomad scientists.”
Generally, most of the activities in the HEDP community are connected to ICF challenges – from particle acceleration and intense X-ray generation, to shock-compressed matter, broadband equations-of-state and hydrodynamic instability studies. I was lucky that these arrangements were quite beneficial to acquire an experience in different fields, and we also had enough flexibility in prioritising particular research directions.
My personal preference was with the directions considering the high energy impact rather than to study exotic phenomena with the most intense optical fields. Also, for several years I contributed to the design of laser research infrastructure and corresponding engineering solutions. During this time, I had oscillating thoughts to move closer to power plant research while understanding the shortcomings of fission power plants.
So, when eventually I realised it has become a practical option to consider commercial, or in my words, “energy not consuming but generating,” laser fusion applications, for me there was no question where to move next. I just hadn’t expected at that time that this insight would take me to Manly Beach in Sydney, to work on this challenging, but most strategic approach, to commercial fusion energy.
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Members of Fusion Energy Insights get access to this article and more in an exclusive publication each quarter – The Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly. Here we share industry updates on nuclear fusion across global activity, fusion regulation, fusion investment, fusion energy news, science and new players, plus we profile different fusion companies and include special feature articles from industry insiders, tracking the progress of this exciting clean energy solution.