Fusion Energy

Nuclear Fusion has advanced significantly in the past 20 years from a university-driven, academic, government-funded field to a private, privately funded industry. Today there are more than 30 firms around the world with stated plans to build the world’s first power producing fusion power plant. These companies have raised over 5 billion dollars in private capital and in November 2021, private investment into fusion surpassed government funding into fusion for the first time in US history. Certainly, many of these firms will fail, due to the high risk, but if one firm succeeds it would offer the world a fundamentally new energy source. NLF Consulting was founded in 2018 to help investors understand the field of nuclear fusion. The firm assembles teams of fusion subject matter experts (mostly retired staff from academia, government laboratories and industry) to assess the quality of startup pitches on behalf of investors. NLF has worked with Honda, Westinghouse, the Naval Research Laboratory, and other organizations to navigate this space. In this talk, the founder of NLF will walk through the kinds of questions that investors ask when evaluating fusion as an investment opportunity and will lay out good resources (books, etc..) for outsider who are trying to get involved with this field. The talk will also discuss the broad industry trend of adding superconducting wire and magnet to existing fusion approaches and what that means for future fusion devices. Co-sponsored by: IEEE Power and Energy Society Speaker(s): Dr. Matthew Moynihan, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/342241