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China's first linear controlled nuclear fusion company, Hanhai JuNeng, has announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing, led by HuaYing Capital, with HouShi Fund and Qiji ChuangTan following suit. The funds raised in this round will primarily be used for the assembly of a nuclear fusion team and the completion of the design of the first-generation device. Previously, Hanhai JuNeng had also received seed round investment from Qingzhou Capital.

Benchmarking against Helion Energy, Hanhai JuNeng focuses on low-cost rapid iteration and is the first company in China to specialize in linear controlled nuclear fusion.

Established in 2022, Hanhai JuNeng concentrates on the research and development of Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) devices and their accompanying plasma sources and diagnostic platforms, which have the advantage of low-cost commercial power generation. The company aims to provide high cost-performance and high reliability core components and overall solutions for future commercial fusion power plants.

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The team possesses extensive industry experience. The founder and CEO, Xiang Jiang, has over 20 years of research and work experience in the field of controlled nuclear fusion. He studied at the University of Science and Technology of China's Plasma Specialty for ten years, completing his undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies consecutively. He has been involved in work related to the tokamak technology route and has served at the Beijing Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics Research Institute of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, participating in the experimental design and theoretical research of several national key projects on laser inertial confinement fusion. The Chief Scientific Advisor, Wu Songtao, is the leader of the vacuum chamber overall project team of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) tokamak department, as well as the coordinator and secretary of the ITER high-level coordination meeting. He has served as the assistant to the general manager and deputy chief engineer of the national major scientific project "EAST (HT-7U) Superconducting Tokamak Nuclear Fusion Experimental Device."

Chengdu is home to one of China's earliest professional research institutes engaged in the development of nuclear fusion energy, the Southwestern Institute of Physics of the Nuclear Industry, and has a strong nuclear industry system. On December 29 last year, a controllable nuclear fusion innovation consortium, led by the China National Nuclear Corporation and including 24 other state-owned enterprises, research institutes, and universities, was also announced in Chengdu.

This is an important reason for Hanhai JuNeng's choice of Chengdu as its location. In June 2023, Hanhai JuNeng and the Southwestern Institute of Physics of the Nuclear Industry held a signing ceremony for the conceptual design and technical development contract of the HHMAX901 fusion experimental device.

"Hanhai JuNeng will conduct in-depth cooperation with the Southwestern Institute of Physics and gradually promote and carry out technical cooperation with the main research institutions and numerous experts in the domestic fusion industry. The company aims to build the first-generation experimental device and achieve successful discharge within a year," Hanhai JuNeng stated in a press release at the time.

The technical route chosen by Hanhai JuNeng is not the tokamak but the linear device of the Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) in magnetic confinement, benchmarking against the American star startup company Helion."The tokamak device can certainly achieve the goal of power generation, but it is clear that everyone has underestimated the challenges of commercializing the tokamak, with the high construction costs making it difficult to achieve a commercial closed loop in the short term," says Xiang Jiang, CEO of Hanhai Ju Neng. Regardless of the large-scale tokamak such as the ITER project requiring substantial financial support, even the investment needed for a miniaturized tokamak is not a small amount, as can be seen from the financing amount of the CFS.

In contrast, linear devices not only have the advantage of magnetic field confinement of plasma but are also simple and convenient to build, easy to replace, and cost-effective. At the same time, they may also achieve power generation by directly converting plasma kinetic energy into electrical energy, which can significantly improve energy conversion efficiency. Helion Energy, founded in 2013, has quickly iterated to the 7th generation and is expected to demonstrate net power generation capabilities by 2024. Such a fast iteration speed can solve engineering problems more quickly, thus promoting commercial power generation more rapidly. With this, Helion Energy has proposed to supply 50 megawatts of power to Microsoft by 2028, with the cost per kilowatt-hour gradually reducing to one cent.

Hanhai Ju Neng uses an innovative high-density field-reversed configuration device, which is a simpler magnetic confinement system. The current generated by the plasma inside forms a magnetic field opposite to the external magnetic field, which allows the plasma as a whole to form a closed magnetic field structure, thereby achieving confinement of the plasma.

The low cost, rapid iteration capability of the Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC), and the advantage of achieving a neutron source in the short term, are the main reasons why Hanhai Ju Neng has chosen this technological route.

Hanhai Ju Neng is already preparing for the engineering of the device, with the first-generation experimental device to be built in the second half of this year and completed by 2025.

Focusing on fusion as the ultimate energy source in the long term, and achieving neutron source product applications in the medium and short term.

In order to achieve the goal of fusion power generation, Hanhai Ju Neng has planned a "step-by-step" development strategy and adopted a "laying eggs along the way" mechanism: by the beginning of 2025, develop and build the first-generation neutron source engineering prototype, successfully ignite the plasma, and start the market application of accelerator neutron source BNCT radiation therapy for cancer treatment; by the end of 2025, upgrade and optimize the device to form the first-generation nuclear fusion neutron source device, and form commercial landing in the production of medical isotopes, neutron imaging, and neutron irradiation transmutation processing of nuclear waste; from 2026 to 2030, through rapid multiple iterations of the device, cooperate with nuclear power owners to build a fusion demonstration power station by the end of 2030, complete a 50MW level of energy output, and achieve fusion power generation; in the early 2030s, develop a commercial nuclear fusion device with more than 100MW and a significant advantage in the cost per kilowatt-hour, and achieve the industrialization of fusion power stations.

Taking the boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) in radiotherapy and the supply of medical isotopes as examples of the hundred-billion to trillion-level application markets.

Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a precise binary radiotherapy method induced at the cellular scale. BNCT for treating tumors first involves injecting a boron delivery agent into the patient, causing it to accumulate at the tumor site, and then using a thermal neutron beam to irradiate the tumor site. Through the nuclear fission reaction between thermal neutrons and 10B within the tumor, high linear energy transfer (LET) alpha particles and recoil 7Li nuclei are produced, selectively killing tumor cells. The boron delivery agent itself has low toxicity and is non-radioactive; the energy of thermal neutrons is low, and the treatment typically only requires 1-2 neutron irradiations, minimizing radiation damage. Currently, BNCT has been successfully applied in the treatment of recurrent gliomas, recurrent head and neck tumors, and malignant melanomas. Clinical trials have also been conducted for other common tumors such as liver cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer, with equally good therapeutic effects.In March of this year, Xiamen Hong'ai Hospital's BNCT Oncology Center established a partnership with the American nuclear fusion company TAE. TAE has been providing neutron source products for cancer treatment to Hong'ai Hospital, and the collaboration between the two parties has already obtained permission for human clinical trials and is on the verge of acquiring a Class III medical device registration certificate. By the end of July this year, the BNCT Research Center of the Tenth Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University (Dongguan People's Hospital) commenced construction, with a 12-story building equipped with approximately 300 research beds, which will subsequently enable the development of technologies for tumor treatment and biopharmaceuticals.

Medical isotopes play a pivotal role in modern medicine, with widespread applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, and research, continuously driving advancements and innovations in medical imaging and radiotherapy. In recent years, the global supply of medical isotopes has relied on a handful of medical research reactors in countries and regions such as Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, South Africa, and Australia, most of which have exceeded their service life and face a range of issues including high maintenance costs, waste disposal challenges, and safety risks. It is evident that the construction of a new type of medical isotope production reactor will not only alleviate domestic supply and demand tensions but also create favorable conditions for "capturing" the international market. Nuclear fusion reactors can produce a variety of radioactive isotopes, enabling partial domestic substitution.

Zhang Gaonan, Managing Partner of Hua Ying Capital, stated: "Controllable nuclear fusion, as an important strategic layout for national energy security, has always been highly valued in terms of research and development of cutting-edge technologies, with policies continuously guiding private capital to actively participate in the field of nuclear fusion. The linear device technology, which confines plasma through the formation of field-reversed configurations or magnetic mirrors, can achieve lower construction costs, faster development iterations, lower maintenance difficulty, higher energy output density, and more flexible application scenarios. The Hanhai team, with its industrial resources, technological accumulation, and commercialization capabilities, has a solid cooperation foundation with multiple universities and research institutions. Based on the development of linear fusion devices, they are advancing the industrialization of boron neutron capture therapy equipment. Hua Ying firmly believes in the development of China's controllable nuclear fusion field and is willing to accompany Hanhai in continuously breaking through and moving forward with determination."