ORNL, Rutherford Energy Ventures launch fusion partnership

Fusion Upscaled Leveraged Consortia for Rapid Acceleration (FULCRA) is the new public-private partnership between Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Rutherford Energy Ventures, a fusion consultancy company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. FULCRA intends to create shared fusion test bed infrastructure at ORNL to serve as a design and funding model for similar test facilities at other national laboratories.

The formation of the partnership was inspired by the Department of Energy's Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap, which is meant to be "a comprehensive national strategy to accelerate the development and commercialization of fusion energy by the mid-2030s." REV, which was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering professor Dennis G. Whyte and finance professor Andrew W. Lo, can contribute its specialization in "both the technical requirements for fusion commercialization and the financial engineering structures needed to mobilize investment," while ORNL lends its expertise in fusion science and technology research.

According to the joint announcement from ORNL and REV, the partnership represents a consortium model that "pools federal capabilities with private sector investment to build specialized test beds for validating critical fusion subsystems, like plasma-facing components, fuel breeding blankets and reactor-compatible sensors and control systems."

What it's about: FULCRA's work will be divided into two integrated phases over a period of 18 months. In the first phase, REV will conduct a collaborative assessment of ORNL's fusion capabilities, infrastructure, and programs in regard to fusion-enabling technologies, fusion blankets for reactor shielding and fuel breeding, and a neutron source for producing fusion-level neutron energies. REV will also evaluate ORNL's partnership framework and "engage with the private sector to understand industry needs and investor interest."

In the second phase, the REV and ORNL will "select and develop a technical blueprint, financial framework, and operating model for a pilot Fulcrum at ORNL," according to the announcement, that will serve as "a shared-use, high-impact research facility and strategic investment opportunity for commercial partners to cost-effectively develop high-impact components and commercial technology."

The work performed with the "pilot Fulcrum will be turned into a replicable model to develop additional Fulcra at ORNL and other national labs" in order to "de-risk the critical systems needed for future fusion pilot plants, build the fusion workforce, and accelerate fusion energy commercialization," the companies stated.

Meeting today's challenges: Arnold Lumsdaine, the public-private partnership's lead in ORNL's Fusion Energy Division, said of the FULCRA launch that "ORNL has spent decades building its fusion program and relationships across the public and private sectors. The lab is positioned to be a national leader to meet today's challenges, not just as a research institution, but as a partner and collaborator towards commercialization."

Guinevere Shaw, REV's partner and managing director, said that the "fusion field has the science. What it has lacked is the testing infrastructure to translate that science into validated, commercial-ready technology, and no single entity can build that alone. FULCRA is designed to solve exactly that problem, anchored at ORNL, where the scientific foundation already exists."