Over the past several years, ARPA-E has funded a number of fusion “capability teams” through the Fusion Diagnostics “Exploratory Topic” (2019) and the BETHE program (2020) to accelerate fusion-energy R&D via public-private partnerships. These capability teams, drawing predominantly from federally funded researchers at U.S. national laboratories and universities, bring state-of-the-art tools (including diagnostic instruments and computational modeling) and expertise to help ARPA-E-supported fusion concept teams (and other federally and privately supported fusion teams) accelerate progress toward their R&D technical milestones.

Typically, only the largest federally or privately funded fusion organizations have the resources and personnel to benefit from state-of-the-art diagnostics and computational modeling. Without these tools, it is difficult, if not impossible, to uncover problems, overcome them, and make rapid R&D progress. In many cases, a full suite of diagnostic and computational tools, as well as the personnel effort required to utilize them, are more expensive and time consuming than building and operating the fusion experiment itself. ARPA-E’s fusion capability teams provide access to state-of-the-art diagnostic and computational modeling tools and expertise to multiple fusion concept teams, reducing the financial burden of each individual team.

The concept of a transportable fusion diagnostic has an illustrious precedent. In 1969, Russian scientists reported record electron temperatures in a fusion device they called the “tokamak.” These results were received skeptically in the West. At the height of the cold war, the Russians invited a team of plasma physicists from the UK to confirm their measurement with a then state-of-the-art Thompson-scattering system. The UK team flew to Moscow in a plane full of equipment and succeeded in setting up the apparatus and measuring the electron temperature on the T-3 tokamak. Their results confirmed the original reports, and the independent measurement pushed the fusion world in a new direction, leading to rapid R&D progress in the 1970s and 1980s.

Images from Euro-Fusion.org

While diagnostic hardware can still be very expensive, ARPA-E’s capability teams do not need entire airplanes to transport their equipment. Thanks to miniaturization of many components, most can fit into vans or even overhead luggage racks. Furthermore, computational modeling teams can launch state-of-the-art numerical simulations of fusion experiments from virtually anywhere, regardless of where high-performance computers physically sit. The impact of these fusion capability teams has the potential to be just as significant as that of the UK team in 1969. Capability teams can provide certainty and independent assessment of achieved plasma parameters in commercially promising fusion concepts and approaches, solidify the understanding of physics models and validating them, and nail down cost estimates. This provides researchers, funders, and eventual customers with timely clarity into the true performance and promise of the experiments and will enable well-informed decisions about next steps.

(Left) ORNL team bringing their diagnostic to the Princeton Field Reversed Configuration (PFRC) Experiment (Princeton Fusion Systems and PPPL, OPEN 2018); (Right) LANL and LLNL diagnostics installed on the FuZE device at Zap Energy.

ARPA-E fusion capability teams have already started deploying their diagnostics and delivering actionable insights into plasma conditions. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) sent their soft X-ray diagnostic to Zap Energy to measure electron temperature. Over the course of several weeks, the Los Alamos team was able to work remotely with onsite Zap personnel to make several measurements. According to Dr. Brian Nelson, Chief Technology Officer for Zap Energy, “The ARPA-E Capability Teams enable Zap Energy to field important diagnostics, accelerating progress, saving costs, and providing access to valuable expertise and equipment.” The diagnostic lead, Dr. Glen Wurden of LANL, commented “We have been happy to help private fusion companies by bringing decades of national-laboratory pulsed-power and diagnostic expertise to bear on their experiments. We learned how to ship our equipment, and then do setup and experiments remotely, through Zoom to the control room, and even on the machine (via a laptop video/audio presence). The best thing was that, sitting in Los Alamos at home, I didn't even have to mask up!" Very recently, the LANL-led team traveled to Zap Energy and had another successful experimental campaign, with results expected to be reported through conferences and peer-reviewed publications.

The ARPA-E fusion capability teams each created one-page information sheets, or “trading cards,” that list their capabilities, affiliations, and contact information. In July 2021, the teams presented their capabilities to member companies of the Fusion Industry Association. The teams are ready to collaborate with and help fusion concept teams (e.g., one potential mechanism is through the DOE INFUSE program) accelerate R&D progress toward commercial fusion energy. Please peruse the table below of all the teams, and/or scroll through the full collection of trading cards.