Shrimp — WikiCC

In theory, nuclear fusion is the perfect energy source, simply put hydrogen in and get copious amounts of energy and helium out. There is no vast habitat loss like solar and no horrific carbon emissions like coal or gas. The only problem is that the machines capable of creating fusion are massive, expensive, and incredibly complex. This is why despite billions of dollars of funding and thousands of engineers working tirelessly for decades, we still don’t have a fusion reactor that can produce power. But, in an industrial estate in Oxford, a revolutionary new reactor has been created that solves all of these problems and could even deliver useable fusion energy by 2030. But these scientists didn’t come up with this incredible new tech all by themselves. They were inspired by the deadliest shrimp in the world. Welcome to First Light Fusion’s outstanding biomimicry fusion technology.

Before we dive into First Light’s technology, we first need to understand why we haven’t yet cracked fusion energy. You see, actually getting hydrogen to fuse into helium (and releasing a tonne of energy) is relatively easy. You just need to make conditions with high enough pressure and temperature so that the hydrogen atoms have enough kinetic energy to overcome the repulsive atomic forces.

JET’s tokamak reactor — JET

However, the current reactor designs we have, such as magnetic confinement reactors (tokamaks), inertial confinement reactors (National Ignition Facility), and magnetized target fusion reactors (Helion), are all very complex and energy-hungry. They all require either powerful and precise magnetic fields or mighty lasers to get the fusion reaction going. This makes these machines deeply complicated, with thousands of areas for potential efficiency losses, which is why we struggle to get out more energy than we put in.

One solution is to utilize modern computer simulations (see my article on DeepMind’s Fusion AI) and cutting-edge materials to solve these efficiency issues. However, developing, simulating, implementing, and then proving these solutions work takes years and costs millions (if not billions) of dollars. This is precisely why fusion has been so elusive for so long.

First Light’s M3 reactor — First Light Fusion

But First Light Fusion decided to take a completely different approach. By simplifying the entire machine, they can cut out areas that are causing losses. Furthermore, the far simpler machine can be made more efficient far quicker with less expenditure as it’s smaller and simple design makes development easier.

But how do you take one of humanity’s most complex machines and simplify it? Well, you look to nature as evolution tends to have an answer for every engineering problem. First Light Fusion found its natural inspiration in the pistol shrimp.

Pistol Shrimp with it’s famous claw — WikiCC

Pistol shrimps are no bigger than your finger, yet they are feared in their ocean home. This is due to the weaponry they carry. One of their claws has been modified and turned into a potent cavitation gun capable of inflicting horrific damage to their prey or anything which threatens them.

Cavitation is when water is pushed so hard that it separates and creates a vacuum bubble. The water then rushes back in to fill this void so quickly that it can get hotter than the surface of the Sun! This effect can be seen in many places, from damage to high-speed ship’s propellers and even scarring on dolphin flukes. But the pistol shrimp can shut one of its claws so fast that it creates a cavitation bubble and fires it at its victim. This either stuns its prey or can severely hurt any threat.

BBC Investigation of the pistol shrimp

This is a pretty neat trick, but how can it help us make a better fusion reactor? Well, by understanding the mechanics behind how pistol shrimps create cavitations, we can do the same but turn it up to 11!

First Light Fusion designed a projectile-based reactor that utilizes hypersonic shock waves to create the insane temperatures and pressures needed for fusion. It starts with a pellet containing hydrogen, which is dropped and left to free-fall through the reactor. When it reaches the middle, a ‘rail-gun’ like device shoots it with a tiny projectile traveling at 14,500 mph! When this projectile hits the pellet, it compresses it from a few millimeters wide to only a hundred microns wide (about 5% of its original size).

First Light Fusion’s simulation of shockwave

But the pellet doesn’t just squash. It is shaped in a way so that the hydrogen it contains gets mixed into the projectile’s shock wave, squeezing it even further (just like a pistol shrimps cavitation). This then causes fusion and releases a tonne of energy! First Light then uses liquid lithium to capture this energy as heat and uses a heat exchange to turn that heat into useable energy.

This incredible reactor only has four simple parts. A gun, a fuel pellet/projectile, a reactor chamber, and energy capture. We can easily make each of these incredibly efficient in no time without having to spend billions. All thanks to using fluid dynamics like a humble shrimp.

First Light has already built a reactor that works in this way and has achieved fusion with efficiency levels rivaling the industry-leading highly developed tokamaks. An unprecedented lead for a brand new design of fusion technology.

First Light Fusion’s reactor could be cheaper than nuclear power — Photo by Fusun Tut on Unsplash

This has given them the confidence to announce that they will be creating a working fusion reactor based on this technology that can create 744 MW of power by 2030. Even better, they predict it will cost less than $1 billion, making it orders of magnitude cheaper than any other fusion technology. It will even be cheaper to build than most fission nuclear reactors we have today! So not only could First Light have the first functional fusion reactor, but the cost per kWh may be significantly less than the current market average!

So, do pistol shrimps hold the key to nuclear fusion? It certainly seems they might! First Light has already shown that the shrimp-based fusion technology works really well. But now, they need to develop and refine it, which is the challenging part. There are many dead ends and near impossible engineering challenges between them and a working fusion reactor. However, they have already shown that they are far more ingenious, wily, and creative than anyone else in their industry. Plus, their design has far fewer challenges to overcome than any other fusion reactor. So if anyone can pull this technology off, it is these underdog Brits from Oxford.