The technology under development injects a magnetized target, a plasma mass in the form of a type of plasmoid termed a compact toroid, into a cylinder of spinning liquid metal.

[1][2][3] In 2018, the firm published papers on a spherical tokamak and a recent conceptual design was presented at the 30th IEEE Symposium of Fusion Engineering (SOFE).

The company says LM26 is designed to achieve fusion conditions of over 100 million degrees Celsius (10 keV) by 2025 and progress towards scientific breakeven equivalent by 2026.

The company's website states Greg joined General Fusion in 2020 with a well-established track record of executive leadership.

Greg’s experience prior to joining General Fusion demonstrates his ability to set the groundwork to create massive shareholder value for technology-enabled companies.

He worked in varied C-level roles in complex industries, moving companies through all stages of maturity and scale, across all functions of the businesses.

He has extensive knowledge of the latest technologies related to electronics, computers, materials, lithography, optics and fabrication and is experienced in designing and building test apparatuses to evaluate technical concepts.

Prior to establishing General Fusion, Michel spent nine years at Creo Products in Vancouver as a senior physicist and principal engineer.

His bio on the company's website says Klaas has over 20 years of venture capital experience spanning Europe, North America and the Middle East.

From there, he joined Vanenburg Group where he established and managed a corporate venturing team that led investments in Europe, Israel and the US, which included WebEx.

[11] General Fusion's approach is based on the Linus concept developed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) beginning in 1972.

[12][13][14] Researchers at NRL suggested an approach that retains many of the advantages of liner compression to achieve small-scale, high-energy-density fusion.

[16][14] However, this claim is not borne out by the literature as various Linus devices with no timing constraints, including systems using single pistons, were built during the experimental runs during the 1970s and demonstrated fully reversible compression strokes.

The compression increases the density and temperature of the plasma to the range where the fuel atoms fuse, releasing energy in the form of fast neutrons and alpha particles.

The target chamber’s outer wall is a solid lithium liner contained within a cylindrical composite vacuum vessel.

[29] However the plant was put on hold in 2023 when the company announced that it would instead build a different machine in Canada aimed at demonstrating breakeven by 2026.

[36][20] The hammer piston struck an anvil at the end of the bore, generating a large amplitude acoustic pulse that was transmitted to the liquid metal in the compression chamber.

[39] Patents were awarded in 2006 for a fusion energy reactor design,[40] and enabling technologies such as plasma accelerators (2015),[41] methods for creating liquid metal vortexes (2016)[42] and lithium evaporators (2016).

PI3 reached 10 ms confinement times and temperatures of 250 eV, almost 3 million degrees Celsius, without active magnetic stabilization, auxiliary heating, or a conventional divertor.

Its primary compression testbed, a 1:10 scale system using water rather than liquid metal,[51] has completed over 1,000 shots, behaving as predicted.

General Fusion's founder and Chief Science Officer noted several specific difficulties that are not present in DC tokamaks.

[4] Indeed, General Fusion are yet to demonstrate mechanical compression of a plasma by a liquid metal wall,[55] despite this being a key technology required for their powerplant.

Nor have they demonstrated a liquid metal shaft, or a means of re-establishing high vacuum conditions in the short time interval (<1 s) between pulses.

[87] In December 2023, the company announced the Canadian government invested an additional CA$5 million through Canada’s Strategic Invesment Fund to advance its LM26 fusion demonstration machine at its Richmond headquarters.

[89] General Fusion successfully sourced a solution for "robust seal technology" capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and repetitive hammering, so as to isolate the rams from the liquid metal that fills the sphere.