Just A Little Z-Pinch: Zap Energy’s Game-Changing Approach to Fusion Power

ARPA-E funded Zap Energy as part of its BETHE program back in 2020 to advance and enable controlled fusion as a source of safe, clean, abundant, and dispatchable power. Zap’s unique approach, known as a “Z-pinch“, drives electrical current through the fusion fuel, creating self-generated magnetic fields that compress and heat the fuel toward fusion conditions. In this video, ARPA-E Program Director Dr. Scott Hsu and Zap’s Ben Levitt, AJ Kantor, and Ryan Umstattd help explain how this sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch may be the simplest and most compact of all known controlled-fusion approaches, as it does not require magnetic coils nor any external heating systems other than the source to drive the electrical current. Zap’s ARPA-E funded project will enable them to build a more versatile SFS Z‑pinch device to eventually allow for independent control of the plasma formation and acceleration stages. They will use the new device to advance their triple product toward breakeven conditions.