HB11 Energy will sit on the Industrial Council of TINEX, part of a $180M ($A287M) initiative by the US Government to win the global race to commercialise clean fusion energy.
Target Injector Nexus Collaboration for Inertial Fusion Energy Concepts (TINEX) is the only initiative dedicated to the support of Inertial (Laser) fusion, a field that was historically pioneered by the HB11 Energy’s Australian team.
It will open US Department of Energy (DoE) resources at General Atomics (lead organisation), Colorado State University, SLAC National Accelerator, UC San Diego, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to address challenges of precision injection and tracking of an engineered fuel pellet as it is shot into a laser fusion reactor.
This comes off the back of the announcement by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fusion Innovation Research and Engine (FIRE) program of which TINEX was one of six programs selected.
This significant investment is amongst the first of many public-private-partnership initiatives under the US Fusion Energy Strategy 2024 dedicated to solve technical challenges in support of the rapidly advancing fusion industry and for the US to become the first nation to put fusion energy on the grid.
The TINEX Industrial Council represents the leaders in the laser fusion industry in a race to commercialise the historical breakthrough by LLNL which opened the possibility of a new abundant clean-energy source.
HB11 Energy was the first of these companies to be founded following decades of pioneering physics in Australia by its founder, Heinrich Hora, who was inspired by discovery of aneutronic hydrogen-boron fusion by Adelaide’s Sir Mark Oliphant.
Dr. Warren McKenzie, Managing Director, said
“The laser fusion industry is in need of technology for precisely controlled fuel injection that warrants the weight of this selection of national laboratories to move us closer to realising fusion as a practical, zero-carbon energy solution. We are delighted to fly the Australian Flag as one of the only non-US participants on the council representing this rapidly evolving industry.”
This announcement comes only weeks before the first Secretarial Order under the Trump Administration was signed for the US Department of Energy to begin “Unleashing the Golden Era of American Energy Dominance” which makes an explicit reference to Fusion Energy.
