Tri-Alpha Energy, Inc.
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| Private | |
| Industry | Fusion Power |
| Founded | April 1998 |
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| Headquarters | Foothill Ranch, United States |
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Key people
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Number of employees
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150 |
| Website | www |
Tri Alpha Energy, Inc. (TAE) is an American company based in Foothill Ranch, California, created for the development of aneutronic fusion power. They have proposed a unique design known as the Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor, or CBFR for short, which combines features from other fusion concepts in a unique fashion.
The company was founded in 1998, and is backed by private capital. They operated as a stealth company for many years, refraining from launching its website until 2015. The company did not generally discuss progress nor any schedule commercial production. However, it has registered and renewed various patents. It regularly publishes theoretical and experimental results in academic journals with over 150 publications and posters at scientific conferences over the last five years. TAE has a research library hosting these articles on their website.
As of 2014[update], TAE is said to have more than 150 employees and raised over $150 million, far more than any other private fusion power research company or the vast majority of federally-funded government laboratory and university fusion programs. Main financing has come from Goldman Sachs and venture capitalists such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., Rockefeller's Venrock, Richard Kramlich's New Enterprise Associates, the Government of Russia, through the Rusnano, invested in Tri Alpha Energy in October 2012, and Anatoly Chubais, Rusnano CEO, became a board member.
The Tri Alpha design is based on the colliding beam fusion concept, in which the fuel particles are accelerated to the required fusion energies directly in a particle accelerator. This contrasts with more common designs that slowly heat a bulk fuel to these temperatures inside a confinement vessel of some sort.
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Wikipedia