Unlocking clean, safe, abundant energy production through nuclear fusion: An interview with Peter Roos, CEO, Novatron Fusion Group

April 11, 2024

Company name: Novatron Fusion Group
Solution: Developing new reactor technology to enable commercial fusion energy production in the near future.
Year founded: 2019
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

What’s your take on fusion power? Is it science fiction or do you believe in its promise of abundant, clean energy? When we first met Swedish fusion company Novatron Fusion, we were struck by the elegance of their reactor design, holding the promise of fusion energy with lower complexity and cost than other designs. Investing in the company required one of our most thorough technological deep dives. In this interview, the company’s CEO Peter Roos tells us why fusion energy deserves nothing less than a moonshot approach and shares what support he expects from external stakeholders.

What differentiates Novatron Fusion’s approach from other attempts to deliver commercial fusion?

Our NOVATRON™ fusion reactor is inherently stable due to its concave magnetic field design, which ensures plasma stability and guarantees confinement in combination with other electrostatic, complementary systems. Achieving stable fusion plasma containment is a major technology challenge on the path to commercial viability. While our competitors are still finding solutions, with our concept stability is built in. By bypassing this issue through our elegant design, we have a shorter development time, meaning we’re one step ahead in the race to commercial fusion power.

What is fusion power’s emissions reduction potential?

If we were to replace all coal-fired power plants in the world with fusion power plants — not just by ourselves but also other fusion companies — we would save more than 15 billion tons of CO2 emissions annually. Fusion power produces no emissions. The only by-product is helium — a harmless gas. In fact, the helium produced is itself valuable and will be useful in many industries.

What does a world powered by nuclear fusion look like?

The core benefit of fusion power is clean, safe energy production across the world. But we can think even bigger and far beyond achieving net zero goals! Reducing reliance on limited and geographically-bound sources of energy could reduce global conflict. We have seen how Europe’s reliance on Russian gas supply emboldened Russia to attack Ukraine. A major advantage of nuclear fusion is that it can be produced anywhere. If countries had access to their own supply of continuous energy, energy instability would no longer dictate geopolitics.

Looking even further to the future, one day fusion energy will become so pervasive and cheap that entirely new industries will emerge. A simple example is sustainable fuel: with cheap energy, you can make zero-carbon aviation fuel via electrolysis at price parity with oil. You can also accelerate vertical farming to reduce pressure on nature. Or you can deliver low-cost desalination to deliver safe and cheap drinking water. The list goes on and on. I don’t think we can even fully imagine the spectrum of opportunities at this point in time. Our children will innovate on the back of cheap and clean energy in ways we will surely marvel at.

Other than technology development, what challenges do you face as a fusion company?

Let’s start by saying: We’re technologists at heart and yet, our biggest challenges are not found in the lab. Beyond the obvious needs of investment and faith, we need to prepare a regulatory framework for fusion energy to be part of our energy mix. And that work needs to start now.

The EU already has plans to discuss ways to foster acceleration in fusion development at the upcoming meeting on EU blueprint for fusion energy in April. We applaud these efforts and can only urge them to use the opportunity to swiftly implement funding and regulatory changes to pave the way for the nuclear fusion industry.

Why did you partner with Climentum Capital?

From the first time we met to discuss a partnership, Malin’s extensive knowledge about the energy industry and the climate tech scene as a whole was apparent. She had both the width and the depth of knowledge we needed from an investor.

Being an Article 9 fund, the Climentum team offers us invaluable guidance on how to maintain sustainability commitments in conjunction with financial success.

Malin and the whole team have become reliable partners as we navigate the ups and downs of our journey. We’re also able to tap into their strong networks and have been introduced to the relevant people, entities and companies that are helping us on our path.

What’s next for Novatron?

We are currently building the NOVATRON 1, a prototype machine, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which will be up and running this summer. With that in place, we will start experiments to validate the stable confinement of our hydrogen plasma, essentially proving that our solution doesn’t have the instabilities that the other magnetic confinement concepts have.

In parallel, we are perfecting the conceptual design of the NOVATRON 2, which will form part of the systems that are needed for building a fusion power plant. All this is taking place over the next year. Establishing a first of a kind technology takes time, but we have decades of research and the support of investors like Climentum Capital behind us, meaning that with enough support from governments, academia and industry, commerciality is as close as 2040.

Why did you form Novatron Fusion?

Hope. I always remind myself — more than ever during these troublesome times — that there is hope. Good people will do their best to overcome what others have destroyed.

If there’s just one thing that my team and I could give future generations, it would be a clean, safe and abundant supply of energy. And fusion power plants are that gift.