Thea Energy: Reinventing the stellarator

Thea Energy (formerly Princeton Stellarators, Inc.) is a new stellarator fusion company that is focused on the use of an entirely new way of building the stellarator coil system using only non-interlocking planar coils – which we refer to as the all-planar coil stellarator. The coil set includes hundreds of small, individually controllable coils, allowing for an unprecedented degree of configurability and controllability. Initial work has focused on demonstrating viable techniques to optimize this new configuration, both the plasma and the coil set. As an initial use case, we propose a beam-target deuterium-deuterium stellarator neutron source at ~1/2 the linear dimensions of a fusion pilot plant based on the same concept. We present the concepts behind the all-planar coil stellarator as well as the methods we have developed to perform the field coil optimization. We also discuss the compatibility of the concept with reliability, accessibility, maintenance, and inspectability as well as the ability to incorporate a blanket. Additionally we will present initial studies of blanket design for the stellarator neutron source.