Wisconsin fusion start-up receives help from the Green and Gold

December 9, 2024, 9:23AMNuclear News
The Realta Fusion and ARPA-E team at the WHAM facilities in 2023. (Photo: DOE/ARPA-E)

TitletownTech, a venture capital firm formed out of a partnership between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers, has invested in Realta Fusion, a private fusion startup company that was spun out of an ARPA-E-funded fusion project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2022. Realta is developing modular, compact, magnetic mirror fusion energy generators as an economic, zero-carbon solution to power AI-driven infrastructure and other industrial applications. TitletownTech did not disclose the details of its investment.

WHAM: Realta gets first plasma with 17 Tesla magnets in mirror fusion test

July 25, 2024, 7:01AMNuclear News
Elliot Claveau, honorary fellow in the UW–Madison Department of Physics and experimental scientist at Realta Fusion, raises his arms in celebration of achieving a plasma in WHAM at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory. The device is seen on the floor of the lab. (Photo: Bryce Richter/UW–Madison)

The magnetic mirror fusion concept dates to the early 1950s, but decades ago it was sidelined by technical difficulties and researchers turned to tokamak fusion in their quest for confinement. Now it’s getting another look—with significantly more powerful technology—through WHAM, the Wisconsin HTS Axisymmetric Mirror, an experiment in partnership between startup Realta Fusion and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.