New River Valley Times

NearStar Fusion Accelerates Global Energy Innovation in Fairfax County + Weekly Business News Digest

State and local officials gathered on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, to celebrate a ribbon-cutting at Fairfax County-based NearStar Fusion, a fusion energy development company. Founded in 2021, NearStar Fusion’s team of physicists and engineers is developing an innovative, pulsed approach to fusion energy with the goal of powering the globe with clean, compact resilient energy.  

The Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), the nonprofit operations arm of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority (VIPA), announced at the event that NearStar Fusion had been awarded a $75,000 Commonwealth Commercialization Fund (CCF) grant. This grant will help fund the design, computationally model, build, and experimentally demonstrate the operation of a plasma side injector, a critical enabling component of NearStar Fusion’s technology.

“We are thrilled to receive a CCF grant from VIPC,” said Dr. Doug Witherspoon, Founder, President and Chief Scientist of NearStar Fusion. “Fusion energy has promise to provide virtually unlimited clean electric power, but with technical challenges ahead. Overcoming them will change the world. We are excited to receive this funding to allow NearStar to take the first step in proving our fusion design.”

Based in Chantilly, NearStar Fusion is developing a new pulsed approach to fusion energy that builds on successful methods of imploding metallic liners to create fusion and help power the globe with a clean and limitless source of energy. NearStar’s objective is to simplify fusion technology, using mostly off-the-shelf equipment and materials to expedite the development path to practical fusion energy. An additional application of NearStar Fusion’s research includes interplanetary spacecraft propulsion.

As one of an estimated 33 fusion research companies in the free world, as of 2022, NearStar Fusion is one of the plethora of emerging tech and innovation research companies in many industry sectors that call Fairfax County home. Worldwide, the fusion industry is exhibiting huge growth, according to the Fusion Industry Association, reported Forbes.

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