Carbon-Free Power with Compact Nuclear Fusion: Our Investment in Avalanche Energy
By Lisa Coca, Partner, Climate Fund
A McKinsey report estimates that power consumption will triple by 2050, as living standards and electrification grow. As a result, the need to replace fossil fuels as the predominant form of baseload power generation has become all the more urgent, not only from the perspective of climate change, but also energy resilience. The good news is that we have multiple pathways to decarbonization and replacing the baseload power mix. Solar and wind are on solid trajectories to serve as baseload energy generation, assuming that major investments and advancements continue to be made to advance the cost and scalability of energy storage which will address the intermittency challenge. However, many experts, including the International Energy Agency, believe that getting to net-zero will be very challenging without nuclear energy.
At Toyota Ventures, we also believe that an optimal portfolio approach to decarbonization should include nuclear energy, and that is why I am excited to announce the Climate Fund’s investment in Avalanche Energy.
A nuclear revival is undoubtedly underway. Approximately 30 countries — ranging from sophisticated economies to developing nations — are considering, planning, or starting nuclear power programs, and 55 reactors are already under construction. The sector has also captured the attention of private investors, with more than $3.4B of venture capital investments in the past year. Not surprisingly, fusion has commanded the majority of those investment dollars.
Nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun — has been championed as the holy grail of clean power sources, with no carbon dioxide emissions or long-lived radioactive waste, no risk of meltdowns, and virtually unlimited fuel sources. Moreover, fusion represents the most energy-dense practical fuel source available in that it requires approximately one millionth of the mass of fuel needed to produce the same amount of energy as a coal-operating power plant. To date, no fusion experiment has produced more energy than it takes to trigger the reaction; however, it is worth noting that an important milestone was recently achieved. In August of 2021, Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California achieved an important milestone in the long path toward commercial fusion power by demonstrating the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that produced more energy than it took to trigger the reaction — though low efficiency in pumping energy into the reaction means break-even ‘at the wall socket’ remains a goal for the future.
While this breakthrough is an important validation for the future of fusion, two primary challenges persist, 1) producing the extreme temperatures required to overcome the electrostatic repulsion of nuclei and trigger the fusion reaction and 2) confining the plasma at these high temperatures. Current approaches to these tasks have involved constructing large and highly specialized reactors that either require state-of-the-art magnetic confinement or extraordinarily high-powered laser facilities. Both approaches take years — even decades — of careful planning and design, and they can only be performed by a handful of organizations around the world.
This is where Avalanche differentiates itself. Based in Seattle, Washington, the team has developed the “Orbitron” — a small micro-fusion reactor capable of producing carbon-free power through 5kW modular cells. The small form factor of the cells, at only 12cm D x 36cm L (4.7in x 14.2in), enables cheaper and more agile prototyping not possible with grid-scale fusion reactors. Avalanche can keep the geometry of its plasma core constant, while iterating on the other subcomponents of the cell in as little as 48 hours. It is this pairing of cost-effectiveness with the flexibility to quickly pivot and redesign that most excites us about Avalanche, given that it will significantly reduce the timeline to de-risk the core technology.
Avalanche’s modular 5kW cells aim to serve as a carbon-free power source for use cases that grid-scale production cannot scale down to. This includes, but is not limited to, distributed energy generation, space propulsion, long-distance trucking, and maritime shipping. The company is already establishing itself as a leader in the $8.3B space propulsion market, having been recently awarded a contract from the Nuclear Advanced Propulsion and Power program to deliver a propulsion system for small spacecraft in the next few years.
Co-founded and now led by CEO Dr. Robin Langtry and COO Brian Riordan, the Avalanche team is composed of industry experts with deep technical backgrounds covering plasma physics, mechanical engineering, fusion space systems, and high voltage design. It is this expertise, paired with the co-founders’ combined 30+ years of experience, including Blue Origin, that has enabled rapid design turns with low capital requirements to create sub-MW scale advanced nuclear energy solutions.
The team’s strength is underscored by the fact that they achieved an important technical milestone of achieving 200 kV for confinement in December 2022, and we look forward to supporting them on their journey to unlock a long-term, sustainable energy source for electricity generation through nuclear fusion. Together with Isay Acenas, who played a key role in driving this deal, I am pleased to officially welcome Avalanche Energy to the Toyota Ventures portfolio. We joined the company’s Series A round, which was led by Lowercarbon Capital, with participation by the Founders Fund.
Visit Avalanche’s website and Toyota Ventures portfolio page to learn more.
