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NSERC awards funding to TRIUMF & General Fusion to develop state-of-the-art diagnostic system for LM26 fusion machine

27 March 2024

TRIUMF and General Fusion, an international leader in the development of commercial fusion energy, have received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance grant to advance technology critical to measuring extreme temperatures inside a fusion machine. 

"The TRIUMF team is excited to embark on this project that requires pushing the technology to detect up to 1,000 neutrons in one-millionth of a second, and will pave the way to future ultra-fast detection solutions," says Fabrice Retière, Head, Science Technology at TRIUMF.

Grant funding of $800,000 over four years will support the design and delivery of an ultra-fast neutron spectrometer system to measure plasma temperatures at fusion conditions of over 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV), a key technical milestone that General Fusion aims to achieve with its new Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) fusion demonstration machine.

“This is a prime example of how TRIUMF expertise and infrastructure impact our world,” said Kathryn Hayashi, CEO of TRIUMF Innovations, TRIUMF’s commercialization arm. “TRIUMF Innovations’ project with General Fusion uses our research and development work to fill a technology gap in high-rate neutron detection and provides potential for direct market outcomes in clean fusion energy, healthcare, and subatomic physics applications.”

Full press release available here.

Read more about the MOU between TRIUMF and General Fusion here.