Interview with Yosuke Kubo of Helical Fusion
Fusion energy from the Japanese perspective.
One of the things that The Fusion Report has focused on since its start is profiling the various countries that work in and around the fusion energy ecosystem. It is critical to understand the dynamics of these companies and what motivates them to understand what fusion is progressing towards. In that sense, it was great to talk with Yosuke Kubo, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Helical Fusion. Interestingly, Helical Fusion is one of the few Japanese companies working in fusion energy, in spite of the large number of universities and industry groups in Japan working on fusion energy. Being able to interview Helical Fusion helps to understand how Japan views fusion and its importance.
Different Strokes, Different Folks (Kind of)
As we have observed a number of times, there are a number of approaches to fusion energy: inertial confinement fusion (ICF), magnetic confinement fusion (MCF), and hybrid approaches. Even within each of these broad categories, there are significant differences between different companies.
Helical Fusion, as their name suggests, is utilizing a stellarator with helical coils to produce fusion energy. Helical, which like most MCF approaches is utilizing deuterium and tritium (D-T) as its fuel to produce fusion. One of the questions that I asked Kubo-sand is why Helical Fusion chose the “heliotron” version of the stellarator as an approach (a heliotron is a stellarator with helical coils); his answer highlights the benefits of stellarators:
The science of stellarators is understood, mature and well-known.
Japan has a large amount of experience building stellarators, and simulating their operation utilizing high-performance computing (HPC).
The primary issues are engineering ones, which while difficult, are not insoluble. Rather, these challenges play to the strengths of Japan and Japanese engineering and manufacturing companies. This is especially true for high-temperature semiconductors, a market that Japan leads.
A good example of this is superconducting magnets for Helical Fusion’s stellarator. Rather than relying on HTS tape-based magnets, Helical encapsulates multiple HTS tapes in segmented metal shells, as shown in the picture below. The cable-style architecture allows the magnets to be shaped into fairly arbitrary shapes, including those that are twisted. This is key to building a heliotron.
When Do You Expect Fusion Power to be “On the Grid”, and What Do You See as the Key Challenges to This?
Helical Fusion believes that electricity generated from commercial fusion machines will start appearing on the grid in the early 2040s, with proof of concept systems (which may or may not be economically viable) showing up in the mid-2030s. In addition to leading US companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), Helical Fusion sees Japan as being one of the early countries with commercial fusion energy, primarily because of the country’s expertise in stellarators. Like most of the players in the fusion energy market, Helical Fusion is targeting the grid. However, their issue is that utilities in Japan tend to be very conservative and generally avoid development risk, so to “break in” Helical Fusion is exploring collaboration with companies that are culturally more open to development risk, such as oil and gas companies. Finally, because of Japan’s high electricity prices, Helical Fusion thinks they can be competitive even at $100/MWh, both domestically and in other high-electricity cost markets like Singapore.
Besides the U.S. and Japan, Helical Fusion is fairly certain that China will be one of the early countries to the “fusion energy party”. Kubo-san cited the fact that China is nearly even with western countries today in the fusion race, and that their continued strong investments in fusion will provide them with the opportunity to pull ahead. For all of the key fusion countries, including those in Europe, this race isn’t just commercial – it is about energy security. This is one of the key drivers in Japan, who today is largely dependent on imported fossil fuels, especially as its nuclear power plants are wound down after the Fukushima disaster of 2011.
Overall, Kubo-san (who is also the chair of the industry group providing input to Japan’s government on fusion regulatory regimes) is very positive about fusion energy in Japan. He says having a supportive government and large-scale industrial partners means that Helical Fusion doesn’t have to be a giant to pull off what it is setting out to do. As a spin-out from Japan’s National Institute of Fusion Science (NIFS), he is probably right to be confident about Helical Fusion’s ability to be successful in fusion energy.
Join us August 12 for Fusion 2035: The 10-Year Shot Clock, a half-day webinar featuring leaders from across the fusion ecosystem.
