“The whole hydrogen hype is a little punctured” – here’s the next favorite horse of the energy transition

“Is this investment profitable, it is not relevant,” says the energy company St1: n managing director Henrikki Talvitie In the conference room on the Kungliga Tekniskan Högskolan campus in Stockholm. He speaks of EUR 13 million, which St1 invests in a Swedish growth company Novatron to Fusion Group.

“The genuine goal here is to solve the core problem of the energy transition.”

So find a scalable, emission -free solution for energy production.

Novatron is developing energy production based on a merger reaction here at KTH premises.

The fusion is a “reverse” nuclear reaction in which two atomic cores merge into one, releasing energy. A more familiar nuclear reaction to the general public is a fission where the core breaks down into two or more cores. When it comes to nuclear power, it is usually the energy produced through fission. There is no radioactive waste in the fusion or the same risk of disaster as in the fission.

The Novatron 1 pilot unit is a metal punch in the size of two cake kiosk, which has been overlapped in the KTH campus building.

The company started the tests at the unit in December, and a little surprisingly the first test was successful: the unit is able to form hydrogen gas to form the plasma needed for the fusion and keep it stable with a strong magnetic field. Plasma management has been a key problem in technology that now seems to have been resolved.

“We are the world’s leading builder of dense magnetic walls,” says Erik OdénChairman of the Novatron Board of Directors when presenting the pilot unit.

12 million degrees Celsius – “far too little”

In Novatron 1, the atomic cores are not merged and this is not the intention. For that, the plasma is not hot enough. The device is designed to heat plasma to only about 12 million degrees Celsius.

“It’s far too little for us,” Odén says.

“At the heart of the sun, the temperature is about 12-15 million degrees. However, the pressure is so high that it is sufficient for the fusion. If you want to produce fusion energy on the ground, the temperature must be over 100 million degrees.”

To this end, Novatron plans to build a larger reactor with even stronger magnets and other additional features. That’s where the company applied for additional funding.

Novatron’s goal is to produce electricity into the power grid by the end of the 2030s. There is a lot of talk in Sweden about an electric shortage that may threaten the country in the next few decades if all planned industrial investments are realized. The ambitious goal of the Swedish government is to build new nuclear power by ten large -scale reactors by 2045.

“We are kindly interpreted that nuclear power could also mean fusion oyndal power,” says Novatron CEO Peter Roos. “Fusion is the only technology known to mankind that can be scaled to the level we need and meets the safety requirements set. So definitely if you build ten power plants, let at least one of them from this path.”

Long -term doing

A decisive solution to the world’s energy production has been desired since the 1950s. Maybe that’s why the St1 Winter Road is careful in its words.

“We wouldn’t bother us at all if this would produce cash flow, but when you make such an investment, you need to understand the importance of long -term work.”

According to Talvitie, the energy transition will go for decades – longer than the EU goal.

“Our climate goals are very ambitious. We will not be able to reach those goals on that schedule, unfortunately, no matter how we want, even if we stand on.”

Still, we have to work all the time, he emphasizes.

“We’ve been looking for these GameChanger technologies and tried a few. We are really proud to get involved with Novatron in a research development where there could be something that is really needed at the end of the tunnel.”

Recently, the solution to the energy transition has been sought from hydrogen-to–to-x technologies. Is fusion energy closer to the goal than Power-to-X?

“All in all, the whole hydrogen hype is a bit, could you say, punctured. We have learned a lot on synthetic fuels there and realized that unfortunately there are no technologies if we are talking about scalability.”

According to Talvitie, synthetic fuels are “medium to do” – which St1 also actively continues – and fusion energy “long -term”.