[TheDrive] Lockheed Martin has quietly obtained a patent associated with its design for a potentially revolutionary compact fusion reactor, or CFR. If this project has been progressing on schedule, the company could debut a prototype system that size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.The patent, for a portion of the confinement system, or embodiment, is dated Feb. 15, 2018. The Maryland-headquartered defense contractor had filed a provisional claim on April 3, 2013 and a formal application nearly a year later. Our good friend Stephen Trimble, chief of Flightglobal's Americas Bureau, subsequently spotted it and Tweeted out its basic details.
In 2014, the company also made a splash by announcing they were working on the device at all and that it was the responsibility of its Skunk Works advanced projects office in Palmdale, California. At the time, Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of the Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project, said the goal was to have a working reactor in five years and production worthy design within 10.
Of course, it remains to be seen if Lockheed Martin’s fusion reactor will actually become a reality. Many other companies and institutions have tried for nearly a century to create workable fusion power without success.
On the one hand, a corporation receiving a patent does not necessarily mean they are actively pursuing the technology that the document describes, either. In addition, since the media blitz in 2014, Skunk Works has said very little about this project outside of the plasma physics community. The U.S. government also reserves the right to classify patents it feels might be a threat to national security if they were public, so the fact that this one is not might also calls into question how mature the system might be in actuality.
Still, the that Skunk Works continued to pursue the patent process over the past four years would similarly seem to indicate that they are indeed pushing ahead with the program, at least to some degree. This storied division definitely does have an impressive pedigree when it comes to advanced research and development projects, too. They were also confident enough four years ago to give interviews and offer significant details about the basic reactor design, the projected timeline, and the overall program goals, suggesting that it was a serious endeavor.
Considering the five year timeline Dr. McGuire put out in 2014 for achieving a workable prototype, maybe we’re due for another big announcement from Lockheed Martin in the near future.