ARPA-E Award for Compact Nuclear Fusion Power

Princeton Fusion Systems, a fully owned subsidiary of Princeton Satellite Systems, has been awarded $1.25 Million from ARPA-E for Low-Radioactivity Compact Fusion Devices

Today ARPA-E announced announced that PFS has received a competitive $1.25 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), as part of the Energy cohort of OPEN 2018.

Princeton Fusion Systems seeks to develop technologies to enable future commercial fusion power. Our team’s concept is a small, clean, and portable design based on a field-reversed-configuration plasma. The concept uses an innovative method called odd-parity rotating magnetic field (RMF) to drive electrical current and heat the plasma to fusion temperatures. Under this award, the team will pursue improved electron and ion temperatures through RMF, as well as identify the modeling needed to elucidate the key heating and loss mechanisms for the fusion reactor concept. The team’s ultimate power plant design seeks a very small footprint for a compact, potentially transportable, distributed energy resource that is fully dispatchable and emissions-free.
PFS received this competitive award from ARPA-E’s OPEN 2018 program, in which teams develop innovative technologies to transform the nation’s energy system. OPEN solicitations are an open call to scientists and engineers for technologies across the entire scope of ARPA-E’s energy mission.

This work complements three NASA grants for the development of this technology for nuclear fusion rockets for human and robotic space exploration. This includes the NASA Phase II NIAC Grant, “Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander,” and a NASA Phase II STTR, “Superconducting Coils for Small Nuclear Fusion Rocket Engines“, and a Phase I STTR, “High Efficiency RF Heating for Small Nuclear Fusion Rocket Engines.”. These contracts build on over 20 years of collaborative work between Princeton Fusion Systems and the Princeton University Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. This unique nuclear fusion concept was invented by Dr. Samuel Cohen of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Princeton Satellite Systems was founded by Mr. Michael Paluszek in 1992 to develop advanced space and terrestrial technology. It has developed a wide range of space and terrestrial technology including advanced spacecraft control and navigation systems, formation flying systems and terrestrial energy systems including solar, wind and nuclear fusion.