Will a Compact Fusion Reactor Power Your Next Car?

The closer we get to realizing commercial fusion power for electricity generation, the more we see records and barriers broken around the world: breakeven, plasma confinement times of up to 22 minutes, contracts to buy fusion power, plans for siting commercial fusion plants, etc.

All of those plans are for electrical power plants.

What about cars, trucks, planes, ships, and spaceships? What about your little reactor for your farm in the middle of nowhere?

Fusion Energy Startup Avalanche Inc. Achieves Its Goal of 300 kV

Avalanche Inc., a Seattle-based startup developing compact fusion energy machines, has achieved a major milestone–electrostatic plasma confinement at a world record 300 kV [300,000 volts—MJC].

Compact Fusion Machines - Avalanche

Avalanche Fusion is developing the world’s first compact fusion machine. Learn more about our technology and how it can help us solve the world’s energy crisis.

Avalanche

Avalanche Energy was co-founded in 2018 by Dr. Robin Langtry, CEO, and Brian Riordan, COO. On their website, we read the following:

“We are developing a 1-100 kWe [1,000 to 100,000 watts of electrical output—MJC] compact fusion machine called 'The Orbitron,' which is small enough to sit on a desk. The unique physics of the Orbitron allows for its compact size which is a key enabler for rapid development, scaling, and a wide variety of applications.”

“The reactor chamber for Orbitron plasma is extremely small for fusion devices and requires extremely high voltages to trap the ions at fusion relevant speeds. Managing dielectric breakdown and flashover in such a small space is an engineering challenge, and the plasma interactions for glancing beam-beam configurations are not well understood.”

Avalanche achieved a voltage of 200 kV on April 24, 2023. In their press release, they said this was the “highest known operating voltage of any fusion device since the University of Wisconsin at Madison produced 190 kV in a 2006 experiment."

Avalanche Fusion achieved 300 kV on January 14, 2025. There was no press release; the announcement appeared in X:

Achieving 300 kV puts the current Orbitron prototype at an operating condition where Avalanche’s theoretical calculations predict that the prototype can generate 1 kW of fusion power.

At the 2023 Canadian Workshop on Fusion Energy Science and Technology (CWFEST-2023), Dr. Langtry gave a detailed presentation of the Orbitron (Behind the Scenes of Our Compact Fusion Machines - Avalanche). During the presentation, Dr. Langtry said the following:

“And basically operating there [0.4 Tesla x 300 kV; [see the figure below from the presentation] we're gonna go explore trying to find these really efficient plasmas where the coulomb collisions are minimized, and hopefully we can get to a Q greater than one condition [a net energy gain condition—Kevin Z] operating with deuterium tritium. If we can do that, the next step is to scale up in terms of voltage and magnetic field, and start making, five kilowatts, 10 kilowatts. Now you start to have a really interesting small scale fusion machine.”

As Dr. Langtry explains in his presentation, producing fusion energy from the Orbitron, which falls under the category of an electrostatic device (confining charged particles using high voltages), is controversial.

Theoretical studies done in the mid-1990s predicted the charged particles in the plasma would not collide with enough energy to produce fusion. But, to obtain these mathematical results, scientists had to make several simplifying assumptions (the collisional physics is extremely complicated). Dr. Langtry’s and others’ research indicates these simplifying assumptions yield erroneous results.

Experimentation is currently the only way to definitively resolve the controversy.

The U.S. aerospace community apparently believes Avalanche has a good chance of developing a small fusion energy device.

In the February 10-23, 2025 edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology, an article appears on page 38, entitled “Unexpected Power Options Emerge From Boeing Supersonic Study.” The first five paragraphs of the article are this:

"Do not expect Boeing to launch a supersonic transport anytime soon, but as market interest in higher-speed travel returns, the company’s long-term development ambitions persist.

"Following a NASA study, Boeing has outlined a technology roadmap that could enable a near-term, viable Mach 4 airliner design for decade-end as well as more advanced, environmentally compliant versions for the 2040s and beyond. Dubbed the High-Speed Commercial Vehicle (HSCV), the project was completed under NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program and emerged with some surprising conclusions.

"While some of the aerodynamic and structural findings line up with the trajectory established in the 1990s under the Boeing-NASA Mach 2.4 High-Speed Civil Transport study, the most revolutionary elements of the HSCV are focused on radical new propulsion concepts.

"Perhaps the most notable is the emergence of compact fusion as an advanced technology goal that might address some of the concept-vehicle’s performance and environmental compliance shortfalls. Although the development of a practical fusion reactor design continues to prove elusive, nuclear power proponents believe research in this sector is edging closer to a breakthrough.

"Boeing joins such companies as Lockheed Martin, which in the past decade have theorized that the heat energy created from a compact fusion reactor (CFR) could be used to drive turbine generators by replacing the combustion chambers with simple heat exchangers. In turn, the turbines would generate electricity or propulsive power."

A CFR can power almost any vehicle, machine, or building. It would be ideal for submarines, keeping drones aloft for long periods of time, high-power spacecraft, spacecraft far from the sun, spacecraft propulsion, and colonies on the Moon and Mars. Space-based beam weapons under consideration for President Trump’s Iron Dome could also benefit.

Avalanche Inc. is a company to watch. Experiments this coming year should determine if Avalanche’s electrostatic collision theory is more correct than past theories, and if fusion power can be achieved with their device.

Rebuild the USA: The Trump Presidency and Beyond

After all the years of campaigning, Americans have finally come to the agreement that we will Make America Great Again. But, how do we actually implement the intention, and with a minimum of mistakes along the way?

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