5 Questions with Longview Fusion Energy Systems
Longview Fusion Energy Systems featured in our ‘5 Questions With…’ interview in the December 2024 issue of the Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly.
Each issue we ask a founder or CEO 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 Longview Fusion Energy Systems revealed.
1. What is the approach of Longview Fusion Energy Systems?
The journey to commercial fusion took a huge leap forward on December 5th 2022, when the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) demonstrated the world's first fusion experiment with energy gain—more fusion energy out than the energy required to initiate the fusion burn. No other approach has accomplished fusion burn and energy gain. This ground-breaking achievement, repeated several times since, marks the culmination of decades of work dating back to the invention of the laser in 1960 and the subsequent development of laser-driven fusion physics.
Longview is building directly on this success. Using the same laser-driven configuration proven on the NIF, Longview is moving straight to commercial power plant construction and operation. Longview is the only company that does not have to build a physics test facility, saving great cost and time, and minimising physics and technology risk.
2. Why is Longview Fusion Energy System’s approach to fusion unique?
Longview’s approach is unique because of five things:
- Proven physics: Longview’s approach to fusion is unique because it is built on a foundation of proven physics and has a direct pathway to a commercial power plant.
- Utility-validated Power Plant Design: The MEP is based on fully integrated, self-consistent power plant design, backed by over $100 million design work that brought together key vendors partners and incorporates commercial energy requirements from utilities, regulators and industrial partners.
- Technology: NIF operates at full scale in terms of laser energy, fuel target and target chamber configuration and ignition and energy gain and has repeatedly demonstrated.
- Team Experience: Our leadership team, which includes many of the visionaries behind the National Ignition Facility, has managed many multi-billion dollar high-tech projects across the US and abroad, bringing experience that’s vital to making fusion commercially viable.
- Global Market Penetration: Longview is embedded in the international fusion community and industrial communities, giving us access to a highly skilled workforce, key facilities and technological capabilities that will keep our business advancing rapidly and efficiently.
Leader Insight
Ed Moses, Chief Executive Officer at Longview Fusion Energy Systems
How long have you been working in fusion?
My journey with lasers began in a seemingly small moment during my first year of college when I saw my first laser with a single, vivid red dot projected on the wall across an auditorium. It captivated me and sent me on my lifelong work with lasers and laser light, applications and futuristic possibilities. In the mid-1970s, in graduate school at Cornell, I worked on color-agile picosecond laser light sources. These sources opened the door to new types of spectroscopies, pushing the boundaries of what lasers could reveal in science and technology.
In 2020, convinced that NIF was on the verge of achieving energy gain, I founded Longview Fusion Energy Systems to bring fusion to the commercial stage by the early 2030s.
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