Licube wants to be the fuel provider to the fusion power industry — see how at TechCrunch Disrupt

If fusion power pans out, and there are signs that it will, the world will need a lot more lithium. That’s the bet behind Licube, a startup that has licensed technology from Hirosaki University in Japan, to purify lithium-6, the form of lithium that fusion plants need to make their own fuel, out of naturally occurring lithium.

如果核聚变能源能够成功，且目前已有迹象表明其可行，那么世界将需要更多的锂。这正是初创公司 Licube 的赌注所在。该公司已获得日本弘前大学的技术授权，旨在从天然锂中提纯锂-6，这是核聚变电厂制造自身燃料所需的锂同位素。

The reason comes down to the fuel supply. A lot of things have to go right for fusion power to hit the grid, and one of them is the fuel. Most planned plants would run on a mix of two fuels, deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is easy to come by, but tritium is extremely rare in nature, and it’s an open secret in the fusion world that there isn’t enough of it to power every planned plant.

原因归结于燃料供应。核聚变能源要实现并网，必须满足诸多条件，燃料便是其中之一。大多数计划中的电厂将使用氘和氚的混合燃料。氘很容易获得，但氚在自然界中极其稀有，核聚变领域内公开的秘密是，现有的氚不足以供应所有计划中的电厂。

The proposed workaround is to make tritium on site, inside the power plant itself. A fusion reaction gives off a stream of fast-moving particles called neutrons. Startups plan to surround the reactor with a blanket of lithium, so that when a neutron strikes a lithium atom, the atom splits into helium and tritium. The tritium can then be collected, purified, and fed back into the reactor as fuel.

目前提出的解决方案是在电厂内部现场制造氚。核聚变反应会释放出一股被称为中子的快速移动粒子流。初创公司计划在反应堆周围覆盖一层锂，当一个中子撞击锂原子时，该原子会分裂成氦和氚。随后，氚可以被收集、提纯，并作为燃料送回反应堆。

Not all lithium does this job equally well. It comes in two slightly different forms, lithium-6 and lithium-7, named for their weights. Lithium-6 is far better at capturing neutrons and producing tritium, but it makes up only about 7.5% of natural lithium, and the rest is the heavier lithium-7. Separating the two is difficult, and there is little capacity to do it today, so the world doesn’t have enough lithium-6 either.

并非所有的锂都能同样出色地完成这项工作。锂有两种略有不同的形式，即锂-6 和锂-7，它们以各自的重量命名。锂-6 在捕获中子和产生氚方面表现远优于锂-7，但它仅占天然锂的约 7.5%，其余大部分是较重的锂-7。将两者分离非常困难，且目前产能有限，因此全球范围内锂-6 的供应也严重不足。

Licube sees a big market in solving that problem. “If fusion comes online, it should be a $50 billion market by 2040,” Yohei Kiguchi, co-founder and CEO of Licube, told TechCrunch. Licube is one of 20 startups that are presenting onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco as part of the Startup Battlefield pitch competition.

Licube 看到了解决这一问题的巨大市场潜力。Licube 的联合创始人兼首席执行官 Yohei Kiguchi 对 TechCrunch 表示：“如果核聚变投入使用，到 2040 年，这应该是一个价值 500 亿美元的市场。” Licube 是在旧金山举行的 TechCrunch Disrupt 大会上，作为 Startup Battlefield 创业竞赛一部分进行展示的 20 家初创公司之一。

While fusion has the potential to capture a significant chunk of the multitrillion-dollar energy market, fusion startups are still years away from building their first power plants. “Fusion is the biggest market in the future, but we also understand the future might be late by a few years,” Kiguchi said.

尽管核聚变有潜力占据数万亿美元能源市场的重要份额，但核聚变初创公司距离建造首座电厂仍需数年时间。Kiguchi 说：“核聚变是未来的最大市场，但我们也明白，未来可能会迟到几年。”

Until fusion becomes a major market, Licube plans to use the same technology to purify lithium for use in semiconductor, pharmaceutical, fission reactors, and spacecraft industries. The core technology is based on the electrolyzer, a device that uses electrical current to drive chemical reactions.

在核聚变成为主要市场之前，Licube 计划利用相同的技术提纯锂，用于半导体、制药、裂变反应堆和航天工业。其核心技术基于电解槽，这是一种利用电流驱动化学反应的设备。

In Licube’s case, lithium is dissolved in a liquid on one side of a ceramic membrane. As electrical current flows from one side of the membrane to the other, lithium-6 moves faster. Licube can then draw off that liquid and separate the lithium-6. The goal is to enrich the lithium to at least 99.995% lithium-6. Fusion companies can feed that highly enriched lithium into their fuel breeding systems.

在 Licube 的工艺中，锂被溶解在陶瓷膜一侧的液体中。当电流从膜的一侧流向另一侧时，锂-6 的移动速度更快。随后，Licube 可以抽出该液体并分离出锂-6。其目标是将锂富集到至少 99.995% 的锂-6 纯度。核聚变公司可以将这种高纯度锂送入其燃料增殖系统。

Kiguchi was inspired to start Licube after visiting ITER, the experimental fusion reactor being built in the south of France. He said he was living a couple of hours’ drive away in Monaco after retiring from his previous company, Enechange, an energy-switching platform network in Japan. “I found out that I was too young to retire,” he said. “I’m an energy guy. I want to do something bigger.”

Kiguchi 在参观了法国南部正在建设的实验性核聚变反应堆 ITER 后，萌生了创办 Licube 的想法。他说，在从之前的公司——日本能源转换平台网络 Enechange 退休后，他住在距离那里几小时车程的摩纳哥。“我发现自己还太年轻，不能退休，”他说，“我是一个能源领域的人。我想做一些更大的事情。”