ELUSIVE?:

TOKAMAKS, WHICH USE magnets to contain the high-temperature plasma in which atomic nuclei fuse and release energy, have captured the spotlight in recent months, due to tremendous advances in superconducting magnets. Despite these gains, though, traditional magnetic-confinement fusion is still years away from fulfilling nuclear fusion's promise of generating abundant and carbon-free electricity.

But tokamaks aren't the only path to fusion power. Seattle-based Zap Energy's FuZE-Q reactor, scheduled to be completed in mid-2022, bypasses the need for costly and complex magnetic coils. Instead, the machine sends pulses of electric current along a column of highly conductive plasma, creating a magnetic field that simultaneously confines, compresses, and heats the ionized gas. This Z-pinch approach--so named because the current pinches the plasma along the third, or Z, axis of a three-dimensional grid--could potentially produce energy in a device that's simpler, smaller, and cheaper than the massive tokamaks or laser-fusion machines under development today.

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