Seattle fusion startup Avalanche Energy was awarded a share of a $5.2 million contract announced Wednesday from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop compact nuclear batteries.
The award comes from the DARPA Rads to Watts program, which is focused on building long-lasting batteries for defense and space applications where chemical batteries, solar power and refueling are not possible.
Avalanche is focused on engineering micro-fabricated energy cells that turn alpha particles emitted by radioactive material into electricity. The process, the team said, is analogous to solar cells converting photons into electricity.
“The goals are to produce a device that has a long lifetime, and that can produce orders of magnitude more power than current technologies,” said Daniel Velázquez, Avalanche’s physicist and materials science lead. The target is a battery that could continuously power a laptop computer, for example, for many months but weighs roughly 10 pounds.
And the timeline is tight. By the end of the 30-month program, the objective is to validate the physics involved and develop a power-producing prototype.
“It’s very ambitious,” Velázquez said.
Avalanche is leading the team tackling DARPA’s nuclear battery challenge, which includes the University of Utah, Caltech, Los Alamos National Laboratory and McQuaide Microsystems.
Others are also working on nuclear batteries, including Seattle’s Zeno Power. The startup plans to demonstrate its first full-scale radioisotope power system this year and commercially produce nuclear batteries by 2027.
While Avalanche is ultimately working to develop a compact device that creates energy from fusion — the reactions that power the sun — the DARPA project feeds directly into that longer-term goal, Velázquez said. There are direct parallels to capturing energy from a nuclear battery and from fusion reactions.
That should help the company compete in the global race to commercialize fusion power, which could provide nearly limitless clean energy. To support domestic enterprises, the Department of Energy is slated to commit a record-setting $135 million over 18 months to accelerate fusion research, Axios reported today.
Demand for new power is spiking with the expansion of data centers and the shift from fossil fuels to electrification.
Since launching in 2018, Avalanche has pursued multiple lines of revenue. Last month, the company announced it’s part of a team receiving $1.25 million from AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, to develop advanced materials for extreme environments.
Other efforts include using its fusion machine to produce neutrons for commercial customers; a Pentagon contract to develop technology for space propulsion; and a state grant to launch FusionWERX, a commercial-scale testing facility for fusion technologies in Eastern Washington.
In February, Avalanche announced $29 million in new funding from investors, bringing its total to more than $105 million across venture capital and government grants — a war chest the company is deploying across fusion, propulsion and now compact nuclear batteries.
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