Billions of dollars has been invested into efforts to solve nuclear fusion. How this start-up's breakthrough could make endless energy a reality. Video / Mark Mitchell
Nestled in the hills of Wellington’s Ngauranga Gorge is a small company attempting to crack nuclear fusion and building the beginnings of a reactor.
OpenStar Technologies is one of 45 known companies attempting to commercialise nuclear fusion globally, according to the Fusion Industry Association.
It reached a milestone last week, hitting plasma inside its 5m-wide steel vacuum chamber, effectively a super-hot cloud of gas that provides the environment for fusion to occur.
“This is like humans discovering fire again,” OpenStar founder and chief executive Ratu Mataira told Markets with Madison at its facility this week.
“And that will unlock huge business applications, but also really good societal outcomes. Families won’t worry about continuing to pay the power bill to keep their houses warm.”
OpenStar Technologies founder and CEO Ratu Mataira shows Markets with Madison one of the magnets it developed for its nuclear fusion experiment.
Future iterations of OpenStar’s steel chamber would create nuclear fusion energy, he said.
OpenStar’s effort was a continuation of the levitated dipole experiment that began in the United States, but was shut down in 2011 when it lost government funding.
Darren Garnier was one of the physicists on the original project who now works for OpenStar.
“It was a long period of grief to tell you the truth,” he told Markets with Madison.
“You’ve developed it here [in New Zealand] and I’m so happy to join.”
OepnStar CEO Ratu Mataira (left) and its head of plasma science Darren Garnier (right) at the site.
Most nuclear fusion companies were in the United States. OpenStar was the only one in New Zealand.
It had raised US$12 million ($20.4m) in two years and would probably raise more next year.
“I think it’s absolutely a trillion-dollar market and you want to capture as much of that as you can.”
Could our country be the first to crack fusion, following New Zealander Ernest Rutherford’s splitting of atoms?
And how could abundant energy transform economies?
Go inside OpenStar’s nuclear fusion experiment in today’s episode of Markets with Madison above.
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Madison Reidy is host and executive producer of the NZ Herald’s investment show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.
