Commercial Fusion Energy Power Conversion and Fuel Management Systems

The Fusion Report’s series on the critical supporting technologies for commercial fusion energy continues with power conversion and fuel management systems. In D-T fusion, the 14.1 MeV neutron carries roughly 80% of the total energy into a thermal blanket, where the resulting heat drives a turbine and generator, largely the same mechanism that has been used for over 140 years. Aneutronic approaches such as D-He3, backed by Helion Energy, and p-B11, planned by TAE Technologies, Marvel Fusion, and HB11 Energy, can use either the same thermal cycle or direct energy conversion, which has been demonstrated but is not production-ready yet. On the fuel side, MFE and hybrid D-T plants run a largely closed loop that pumps out unburned fuel and helium ash, purifies it, and reinjects it, while also breeding and recovering tritium from lithium blankets. IFE machines must inject frozen fuel pellets at rates of up to 10 Hertz and clear debris from the chamber between shots.