Economy No investors in Europe
Munich start-up is now driving nuclear fusion power plant in the USA
Status: 07.08.2023 | Reading time: 2 minutes
Moritz von der Linden, founder of Marvel Fusion, works on nuclear fusion
Source: dpa/Sven Hoppe
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Because European investors had waved their hands, the Munich nuclear fusion start-up now wants to take off in the USA. To this end, the company entered into a cooperation with Colorado State University for “the most powerful short-pulse laser system in the world“.
The Munich energy start-up Marvel Fusion now wants to promote the development of a nuclear fusion power plant in the USA. The company and the university announced on Monday that “the most powerful short-pulse laser system in the world” will be built on the Colorado State University campus by 2026. “With the new plant, the company can significantly accelerate the development of its own fusion concept into a power plant.”
The system allows new experiments and meets “all the requirements to demonstrate power plant operation,” said Marvel Fusion. University President Amy Parsons said, “The project will bring significant long-term economic benefit and reputation to Fort Collins and the state of Colorado.”
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In nuclear fusion, atomic nuclei are not split, but fused together like in the sun. In theory, climate-friendly energy can be generated in a fusion power plant without nuclear waste and without the risk of a reactor catastrophe – but in practice this is still very difficult. At the end of last year, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the USA reported a breakthrough: for the first time in a fusion experiment more energy was generated than was consumed.
Marvel Fusion founder Moritz von der Linden said the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung(FAZ), the demonstration plant in Colorado costs 150 million euros and is intended to show that nuclear fusion can be an efficient, clean energy source that can be used on a large scale. “We would also have liked to set them up in Germany,” but European investors waved them off. “In America, in addition to the state, people like Bill Gates, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and Jeff Bezos from Amazon are involved in fusion research with huge amounts,” said von der Linden and criticized: “Here everyone always looks to the state!”
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On the short message service “X”, formerly Twitter, users expressed concern that Marvel could migrate to the United States entirely. The company contradicted this in a tweet.
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Marvel Fusion plans to build a prototype of a commercial fusion power plant in about ten years, which should cost several billion euros and could be co-financed by the first customers. By 2045, the company hopes to be able to make a major contribution to the energy supply.
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