创业公司探索核能发电新玩法

    没有什么比众筹更能说明创业的火爆了。很多人疯狂地通过Kickstarter和Indiegogo等网站资助别人搞创业，接受资助的企业有中既有做脚踏车的，也有做电灯泡的，甚至还有拍电影的。

    现在，就连研究核聚变的都上了这条船。

    核能由于具有廉价、清洁、安全、低碳、用之不竭的特点而被喻为能源中的“圣杯”。自从半个多世纪前，科学家们提出利用核能的设想以来，有40多年的时间里，核能在我们眼中似乎都是未来才能享受到的福利。如今这种“高大上”的能源也终于进入了众包时代。虽然有些核能项目动辄要花费几十亿美元，比如法国的国际热核实验反应堆（ITER）和美国加州的美国国家点火装置（National Ignition Facility），但是这并不意味着在核能领域就完全没有草根阶层可以施展拳脚的空间。

    美国新泽西州米德尔塞克斯市的一家叫LPP Fusion的小公司今年五月在Indiegogo上发起了一项募集20万美金的活动。虽然20万美金在这个行业里微乎其微，但这家公司相信，这笔钱能帮助它在一年之内完成核聚变领域的一项具有里程碑意义的研究。这样，到2020年，它的研究成果就可以转化为核聚变反应堆。

    LPP公司（全名意为“劳伦斯维尔等离子物理公司”）代表了一群致力于解决全球能源问题的创业公司——即核能创业公司。现在有好几十家规模较小的新型反应堆公司要么在继续研究晦涩的聚变问题，要么在绞尽脑汁地设计优于市场现有方案的裂变反应堆。所有这些公司最终都想来一个“一鸣惊人”，彻底取代给人类造成了深重的环境影响和地缘政治冲突的化石能源。很多创业公司的新型反应堆不仅致力于提供电力，还致力于为各种高温工业流程提供清洁的热能，以及用于海水淡化等造福人类的事业。

    尽管LPP可能是核能创业公司中唯一一个靠众筹来拉资金的公司，但它也像它的小兄弟们一样，立志要把死气沉沉的核能行业搅得风生水起。自从上世纪50年代，科学家们第一次把裂变反应堆接入到输电网络时起，直到现在，核反应堆的设计都没有任何根本性的改良。这种保守主义做法就像在黑白电视时代的末期，尽管支持彩色显像的技术已经四处开花，但厂商仍然抱着黑白电视拒绝进步一样。今天的这些核能创业公司就是要让核能板块“亮”起来。

    对于LPP公司来说，这意味着它不仅仅要研究出可控核聚变方案（而不是产生有害废物的核裂变反应），还要取消这个过程中历来对于汽轮机和发电机的需求——核能（包括大多数核聚变方案）的基本原理与化石燃料发电厂的原理是一致的，都是先产生热能，然后产生蒸汽，然后驱动汽轮机发电。而LPP公司研究的一种核聚变形式又叫做“无中子核聚变”，可以释放带电粒子来发电。

    LPP Fusion公司总裁埃里克•勒那说：“核能行业的发电方法还停留在爱迪生那个时代——通过发热产生蒸汽来驱动汽轮机和发电机。而我们可以改变这一点，我们可以把能源直接转变为电能，同时大量削减成本。”

    首先，勒那需要在Indiegogo上募集到20万美元，用来购买比LPP正在使用的铜电极更能经受极端情况考验的铍电极。勒那希望在年底前将铍电极安装在LPP那台试验性的聚变反应堆上，这个反应堆设置在米德尔塞克斯市的一处库房里，那个地方原本堆满了箱子和家具。

    Nothing captures how fashionable the startup has become quite like crowdfunding. The craze for raising contributions via websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo is helping to launch companies from scooter manufacturers to lightbulb vendors to filmmakers.

    Now, even nuclear fusion is game.

    Yes, the Holy Grail of cheap, clean, safe, plentiful, low-carbon energy that has remained 40 years in the future since scientists proposed it over half a century ago has entered the crowdsourcing era. International government projects like ITER in France and the National Ignition Facility in California may have spent billions of dollars in pursuit of the technology, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be a little grassroots action, too.

    LPP Fusion, a tiny company based in Middlesex, N.J., launched in May an Indiegogo campaign to raise $200,000—loose change in this business—that it believes will help it reach a major fusion development milestone in a year and commercialize fusion reactors by 2020.

    LPP (it stands for “Lawrenceville Plasma Physics“) is representative of a new class of companies emerging to address the world’s energy crisis: Nuclear startups. Dozens of small new reactor companies are either chasing the elusive fusion dream or pursuing fission designs that trump those on the market today. All are promising to deliver a knock-out blow to the carbon-intensive fossil fuels that bedevil the world with environmental impact and volatile geopolitics and economics. Many of these innovative firms are positioning their reactors not just for electricity, but also to provide clean heat for high temperature industrial processes and for water desalination.

    While LPP might be the only crowdfunded member of the group, it is determined like its young peers to shake up the staid nuclear industry. Reactor designs have not fundamentally changed since utilities first connected fission machines to the grid in the 1950s, marking a conservatism that has mired nuclear in the era of black-and-white television while colorful possibilities abound. The startups aim to brighten the palette.

    For LPP, that would mean not only delivering fusion—melding atoms together rather than fission’s waste-creating process of splitting them apart—but it would also eliminate the time-honored need for costly turbines and generators. Nuclear power, including most fusion concepts, functions mechanically the same way fossil fuel plants do by creating heat to produce steam to drive a turbine. LPP is working on a type of fusion called “aneutronic” that emits charged particles for electricity.

    “The nuclear industry is stuck using the same method for making electricity that utilities have used since the days of Thomas Edison—generate heat to make steam to drive a turbine and generator,” says Eric Lerner, president of LPP Fusion. “We can change all that. We can convert energy directly into electricity and slash costs.”

    First, he’ll need the $200,000 he seeks on Indiegogo (he has until July 5 to raise it), which would buy him some fancy new beryllium electrodes that would withstand rigors far better than the copper variety that LPP has been using. He hopes to install them by the end of this year in his experimental fusion reactor, which Lerner operates at the Friendly Storage premises in Middlesex, a place otherwise full of surplus boxes and furniture.