American fusion startup Xcimer Energy announced that its "Phoenix" laser system located in a private facility was officially ignited and put into operation on Wednesday local time. The company said it is currently the world's largest privately owned laser device. Xcimer is trying to transform inertial confinement fusion from laboratory technology into a new power generation method with commercial potential based on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) experiment.
Xcimer's technical route is modeled on the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States. In December 2022, the device achieved for the first time the energy released by the fusion reaction exceeding the energy required for ignition, which is regarded as an important milestone in nuclear fusion research. In the NIF experiment, researchers used 192 laser beams to aim at a fuel target smaller than the head of a pencil eraser. The laser first hit a gold target cavity, vaporizing it and converting it into X-rays. The X-rays then compressed the built-in fuel pellets, causing the atoms in them to fuse and release energy.
In contrast, Xcimer believes that by using a more powerful and simpler laser system, it is expected to reduce system complexity and cost while maintaining or increasing fusion energy output, thereby paving the way for commercialization. According to the company's plan, its future fusion power station design will be equipped with two main lasers that can emit microsecond laser pulses. These pulses will be guided through a set of optical systems similar to "energy compression" and transfer energy to the fuel target within a nanosecond time scale, thereby completing fuel compression in a very short time and increasing the probability of producing usable fusion reactions.
The Phoenix system that went online this time is regarded as a key intermediate step on the road to fusion power plants. The system uses "excimer amplification" technology. This type of laser has been used in semiconductor manufacturing, but the power of the Phoenix system has been significantly increased. Xcimer told the media that this krypton fluoride (KrF) laser can output more than 1 kilojoule of energy when operating at full power, and its laser amplification core length reaches 38 meters. The company believes that Phoenix is currently at the forefront of the world's power and scale of privately owned laser systems.
However, Phoenix is still far behind the specifications required for commercial power stations. Xcimer estimates that a true commercial fusion power plant would require a total laser energy of more than 12 megajoules, well above Phoenix’s current output. Therefore, Phoenix is more of a technical verification platform for subsequent larger-scale systems, including key links such as laser amplification, pulse shaping, optical transmission, and fuel-target interaction.
In terms of timetable, Xcimer plans to complete the construction and testing of a prototype system in 2028. On this basis, the company will continue to develop larger integrated systems, with the goal of making the entire device achieve "energy parity", that is, the output of electrical energy is at least equivalent to the input. According to the company's current vision, construction of the first commercial-scale fusion power plant is expected to begin in the mid-2030s. By then, if technology and economy can meet standards, inertial confinement fusion may become an important force in the new energy landscape.
At present, competition in the global fusion field is becoming increasingly fierce, and many start-up companies are exploring different routes and engineering implementation paths. In this context, Xcimer has launched the "world's largest private laser" through the Phoenix system, which is not only a demonstration of technical strength, but also a signal to the capital market and policy makers: inertial confinement fusion is gradually moving from the laboratory to engineering and industrialization. However, moving from a kilojoule-level experimental device to a megajoule-level commercial power station still means long engineering iterations and capital investment. The successful ignition of Phoenix is only one of the key starting points in this process.