Physics / mechanism
Competitive landscape
TAE and Helion are the only serious FRC-fusion plays. Adjacent confinement approaches: tokamaks (ITER, Commonwealth Fusion’s SPARC—higher TRL, deuterium-tritium, neutron-heavy), stellarators (Wendelstein 7-X—steady-state but complex engineering), and dense plasma focus / Z-pinch (Zap Energy—simpler hardware, earlier stage). Inertial confinement (NIF, Marvel Fusion) is a separate branch entirely. FRCs compete on compactness and potential aneutronic operation but lag on plasma stability and confinement time. Compact tokamaks currently hold investor momentum.
Companies using
Connected ideas
Sources
Frontier (open questions)
- To be added.