On May 25, fusion power research startup Lawrenceville Plasma Physics announced that it had signed a contract for research collaboration in nuclear fusion with the Plasma Physics Research Center of I. Azad University in Tehran, Iran. The company will be collaborating with the University to publish research related to aneutronic nuclear fusion power. According to the company's press release, this collaboration "will involve exchange and analysis of data on [Dense Plasma Focus] experiments, simulations, consultation on instruments, work on design of research DPFs, joint supervision of PhD theses, and an annual meeting among participants.
Aneutronic fusion is a different path for fusion energy than most fusion researchers are taking. Most fusion reactions being considered for power generation create significant amounts of neutron radiation, which can cause severe amounts of harm and damage. By contrast, aneutronic fusion produces tiny to non-existent amounts of this deadly type of radiation, and is potentially capable of turning its fusion products directly into electricity. That's a contrast to the main area of fusion research, which would use the heat from the fusion reaction to create steam to power turbines.
One of the challenges of aneutronic fusion is the fact that it uses a Hydrogen-Boron reaction for fuel, rather than the more traditional deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. As a consequence, the temperatures required for aneutronic fusion are significantly higher, which produces its own set of engineering complications. This may be why the United States and Iran are two of the few countries pursuing research in this area.
The company claims that it is able to collaborate with Iran because of an exemption to the U.S. sanctions regime that allows collaboration with academics for the purpose of "creation and enhancement of written publications." The President's Council of Scientfic Advisors was briefed on the effort on May 25. You can read the statement they provided here.
Earlier this year in March, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics reported that they had achieved the temperatures necessary to achieve hydrogen-boron fusion - 1.8 billion degrees Celsius. Their results were published in the Physics of Plasmas. You can read the paper here.
In a press release that came out the time, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Chief Scientist Eric Lerner explained what those results meant for the company's progress towards fusion power: "The research reported in this paper shows that we have achieved two of the three conditions needed to scientifically demonstrate net energy production with aneutronic fuels. We have demonstrated the extremely high ion energies needed to ignite this fuel, and the confinement time of tens of nanoseconds that we need to burn it. We are still far from having sufficient density in the tiny hot regions to get net energy, but that is our next goal."
It'll be interesting to see if this new collaboration allows them to achieve it.