Lockheed Martin to build a compact nuclear fusion reactor

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Lockheed Martin to build a compact nuclear fusion reactor

ENERGY:

Lockheed is building

small fusion reactor

What if the nuclear reaction that heats the sun could be replicated to power cities on Earth?

Lockheed Martin is betting that it can be done — and within a decade. The defense giant said Wednesday that it is building a compact fusion reactor.

The key term here is “compact.” Although nuclear fusion has been studied for decades, Lockheed is hoping to build a reactor small enough to fit on the back of a truck and ship around the globe.

“Many of the approaches [to nuclear fusion] right now have significant drawbacks,” Tom McGuire, compact-fusion lead for Lockheed’s California-based “Skunk Works” team, said in a phone interview. Some of those drawbacks include instability associated with the reaction, he said, and scaling problems, which means the reactor needs to be very large for fusion to work.

“What’s different about our physics is it’s inherently small and stable,” McGuire said. The Skunk Works Group’s first step is proving that its model works, he said. Eventually, the company hopes that “instead of a construction project, we can make them in a factory,” he said.

With the announcement, Lockheed joins a host of ongoing global efforts to study the potential of nuclear fusion. For example, the European Commission last week announced a $1 billion initiative to develop nuclear fusion as an energy source by 2020.

— Amrita Jayakumar

Elsewhere...

PHARMACEUTICALS

AbbVie reconsidering $55 billion takeover

U.S. pharmaceutical company AbbVie said Wednesday that it was reconsidering its proposed $55 billion takeover of Shire in the wake of government moves to curb deals designed to cut taxes, wiping as much as $13 billion off the London-listed firm’s stock price.

Chicago-based AbbVie said it was responding to the proposals that aim to make it harder for American firms to shift their tax bases out of the United States and into lower-cost countries in Europe.

AbbVie’s move for Shire, a leader in drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and rare diseases, was announced in July amid a spate of similar takeover deals within the U.S. and European pharmaceutical sectors.

AbbVie proposed creating a new U.S.-listed holding company with a tax domicile in Britain, which applies low tax rates to patent income and has passed laws that make it easy for companies to shift profits into tax havens.

The news hammered shares in Shire, sending them down 23 percent — back to where they were before the deal talks emerged in June.

— Reuters

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