OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in quest to build New Zealand’s first fusion energy device.

Here at OpenStar, we’re working toward fusion energy using a novel design concept and have signed a collaboration agreement with the MIT Plasma and Fusion Center (PSFC).  

OpenStar is the only company developing a levitated dipole reactor for commercial purposes, and this collaboration is the next step on our mission to revolutionise renewable energy by harnessing fusion - the same process powering our sun. 

The twelve-month agreement will see researchers at both MIT and OpenStar use advanced physics simulations to test methods of overcoming a core hurdle: heating a plasma to a hundred million degrees in order to initiate a fusion reaction.  

“The collaboration will allow us to lean on some of the best brains in the business, and for this first phase, will give us essential insights into how we build the larger version of our reactor,” said Dr Darren Garnier, OpenStar’s Director of Plasma Science and a visiting scientist at the PSFC.  

And while this collaboration is new, MIT and OpenStar are connected through history.  

From 1998 to 2014, MIT PSFC and Columbia University worked on the first Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX) which saw a low-temperature superconducting magnet levitate in a vacuum chamber and confine a plasma. The shape of this plasma resembles the dipole magnetosphere of many planets, including Earth.  

In more traditional fusion machines, multiple superconducting magnets are used to produce a complex magnetic field. In contrast, the levitated dipole uses a single magnet to confine a plasma in a much simpler configuration.  

OpenStar has revived elements of the original LDX design with the addition of novel onboard power supplies and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, with the aim of bringing fusion power to the renewable energy market.  

To support these ambitious goals, the company recruited LDX’s former Chief Experimentalist, Dr Garnier, to become Openstar’s Director of Plasma Science.  

“When the LDX project lost its funding in 2010, it felt like we had left a lot on the table. We’d achieved a lot, and I felt there was a huge amount of potential for the levitated dipole,” said Dr Garnier.  

“A year ago I received an out of the blue email from OpenStar CEO Ratu Mataira telling me he was revisiting the dipole all the way in New Zealand. When they offered me the job a few months later, it was a no-brainer.”  

Prior to joining Openstar, Garnier was a research scientist at MIT working on a collaboration with another fusion company.  

With his ties to the institute, Garnier recognised the value of collaborating alongside world-leading experts to investigate ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) for OpenStar’s Levitated Dipole, a common heating method in other fusion devices.  

The collaboration agreement sees researchers from both sides pooling resources to test using advanced physics models to simulate this possibility.  

“This first phase of the collaboration is essentially to answer the ‘does it work’ question. We can use validated computer codes to decide whether we use ICRH for future dipoles.” 

MIT’s Dr Gregory Wallace and Dr John Wright are leading this collaboration.  

For Dr Wallace, the collaboration means a chance to explore a new, innovative reactor configuration.   

“The LDX project never tested if hot ions can be produced and confined in a dipole field.  We’re hoping to show that this is possible through computational modelling, which will give us the confidence we need to design and build a high-power ICRH system going forward,” said Dr Wallace.