Texatron tests reach 100,000-atmosphere plasma pulses

A portable vacuum vessel now sits at American Fusion’s assembly site, ready for the next push on the Texatron Fusion Engine. The arrival clears the way for fresh plasma experiments after trials that repeatedly compressed plasma to 100,000 atmospheres inside short electromagnetic pulses.

The Texatron takes a different route from mainstream fusion projects such as tokamaks. Instead of relying on giant superconducting magnets to hold a thin gas in place for long periods, it tries to squeeze a dense plasma column for microseconds. At a plasma beta of one, the company says that pressure corresponds to roughly 160 Tesla in magnetic-field terms, but the Texatron generates that field dynamically during the pulse rather than with massive static coils.

American Fusion modeled two chamber sizes at the same target conditions: 700 million Kelvin, 100,000 atmospheres and a confinement time of one microsecond. The smaller 11-inch chamber, intended for a 500-kilowatt unit, is modeled at 3.9 kilojoules of gross thermal energy per pulse. The larger 23-inch design, planned for a 5-megawatt device, reaches a modeled 32.6 kilojoules.

And then? If the compression remains stable and the plasma reaches the conditions needed for self-heating, the modular Texatron family is planned to span roughly 1 megawatt to 500 MW. For now, the practical next step is narrower: measure plasma behavior from 50 to 200 keV and determine whether the pulses can approach self-sustaining fusion.

The boundary is clear. These are theoretical models of gross energy, not evidence of net electricity production. American Fusion says the plasma must still meet the Lawson criterion, in which density, temperature and confinement time overcome losses including bremsstrahlung radiation. Dr. John E. Brandenburg, the company’s chief technology officer, said the testing program is advancing one milestone at a time.