Sustainability
General Fusion’s technology preserves non-renewable resources and promotes energy access, independence and security.
High energy payback
Energy payback is the ratio of energy produced over a power plant’s lifetime compared to the energy consumed to build, maintain and operate it. A low energy payback ratio means that a technology produces a relatively small amount of energy compared to the energy required to operate the system and will tend to have a higher environmental footprint per unit of energy produced.
The energy payback of General Fusion’s technology outperforms all electrical generation technologies thanks to its high energy output, ability to run almost 100% of the time, relatively low cost of construction and very low fuel consumption.
Safe, plentiful fuel
General Fusion power plants use deuterium and lithium as input fuel. The generator converts the lithium into tritium during the reaction process.
Lithium is abundant and widely available. The current annual lithium production is 16,000 t with 28.5 Mt of known land reserves and 250 Gt of seawater reserves. If fusion power plants were used to generate all of today’s electricity, land and sea reserves of lithium would be sufficient for 207 million years of production.
Deuterium is easily extracted from water and the world’s seawater constitutes a reserve of 23.3 x 1012 t of deuterium. If fusion power plants were used to generate all of today’s electricity, this seawater reserve would last for 66.6 billion years.
The Oil and Gas Journal and other sources estimate that known coal reserves will be depleted in 252 years, natural gas in 72 years, oil in 32 years, and 235Uranium in 50 years at today’s production rates. Known 238Uranium reserves would last over 1,000 years if used in fission reactors with new breeder technology.