This start-up wants to produce cheap electricity - with a fusion reactor

A British start-up wants to use a new technology to generate clean electricity from nuclear energy. First Light Fusion has now raised 20 million euros - and plans to start its first trial soon.

The start-up First Light Fusion wants to achieve in record time what many countries have been working on for some time. It wants to build a fusion reactor and has now raised 20 million euros from existing and new investors. The start-up from Oxford wants to use this money to hire more employees and prepare to prove its theories in a practical test. The start-up aims to be on the market as early as the 2030s, which would be much earlier than most other companies and projects. "We have no bureaucracy, and that allows us to be faster," says CEO Nick Hawker. The first test facility is to be built by the middle of the next decade.

The technology on which the start-up is based is complicated and differs from previous nuclear power plants. These usually rely on splitting an element to release energy. However, First Light Fusion now wants to create nuclear fusion by shooting a projectile into a vacuum at high speed. If this works, it could generate more electricity than is consumed and would be a climate-neutral source of energy. According to the start-up, the electricity would then be 75 percent cheaper than before and the plant would be much safer than conventional nuclear reactors.