Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report - Third Edition highlights:
- Recent innovation in the fusion sector has been dominated by advances in high temperature superconductors, and fusion sector companies appear to be some of the global leaders in this technology area.
- Many fusion sector companies are now adopting a worldwide patent strategy, in contrast to historic trends.
- Some fusion sector companies are beginning to move away from protecting innovation with trade secrets, to protecting innovation with patents.
- Innovation in the fission sector remains strong, with recent interest in small modular reactors developing into a focus on micro reactors.
- Innovation in the fission sector is not unique to large engineering companies – smaller, more agile innovators are making notable contributions.
Nuclear fusion
The running joke in nuclear fusion is that practical or commercial success is always 40 years away. No wonder, the preeminent fusion project in the world, ITER, was conceptualised in the late 1980s, began construction in the early 2000s, planned to begin experiments in 2025 (now delayed) and is now unlikely to yield energy production (via the subsequent demonstration power plant ‘DEMO’) until the second half of this century.
As the need for carbon-free energy becomes more urgent, the last ten to fifteen years have seen an influx of investment into the fusion sector (both private and governmental), to accelerate timelines for commercially viable fusion energy. Investment in the fusion sector has now reached over USD 6bn globally, with at least USD 4.2bn invested in the last two years. The single largest investment in fusion energy was USD 1.8bn to Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in 2022.
Many companies receiving recent investment are targeting fusion power to grid by 2030. Both scientists and investors can sense that the world is very close to transitioning to the fusion power age, and the company that can achieve a commercially viable design first will have significant first mover advantage.
Below, we discuss insights obtained from the global patent filing trends in the fusion sector, identifying the technologies that could one day contribute to supplying power to our grid.
Figure 1: Seventy-year trend (1951-2021) - global priority filings - nuclear fusion
(Priority filing = the first time a patent application for a unique invention has been filed, (the first filing))
For historical context, innovations for fusion energy began to be patented around 1949. Figure 1 shows an overview of new patent filings in the fusion sector, covering seventy years of the sector’s history.
Interest in fusion patents clearly peaked from around the late 1970s through to approximately the 1990s – which aligns with the conceptualisation and development of ITER, as well as other large national projects, such as the national ignition facility. Numbers then waned through the 1990s with new filings remaining at a steady level throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
Unexpectedly, the average number of new filings has not increased significantly in the last 15 years or so, plateauing at a modest level. There is, however, a hint of an upward trend in the most recent data, with 50 percent more filings in 2021 compared to typical levels from the preceding decade. Interestingly, this uptick can be attributed to a greater number of patent filings in Asia, in particular Japan, Korea and China.
So, is there a reason behind the steady state and can we now expect to see the recent uptick in filings continue to gain momentum in the coming years?
Historically there have been many innovators in the sector that do not pursue a patent strategy, either through altruism or because they preferred a trade secret strategy. Trade secrets perhaps tie into a previously accepted logic that commercial fusion is too far away for a twenty-year patent term to be relevant. Now, however, with fusion energy expected to come on-line in the 2030s and herald an ever-increasing private investment, it will be interesting to see whether strategies start to adapt to include more patent filings. The 2021 data certainly teases such a prospect.
Figure 2: Seventy-year trend (1951-2021) - total patent applications and priority filings by year - nuclear fusion
We also see an interesting trend in the total number of patent applications published each year (Figure 2). Historically, it has been typical for the fusion sector to focus their patents on a few ‘core’ countries, almost certainly due to country-specific differences in types of fusion technology development. Recent data suggests that this classic attitude is changing, with patents now filed to protect inventions across a greater number of countries.
Figure 3: Ten-year trend - top filers - nuclear fusion
Figure 3 shows the number of new (priority) filings by applicant from 2011-2021, indicating the primary innovators in this area. Many names on this list will be instantly recognisable to those in the sector. Leading the way is UK company Tokamak Energy, followed at some distance by TAE Tech, the Korea basic science institute (KBSI), and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. TAE Tech claims to being the world’s first private fusion company, while Tokamak Energy is a success story for privately pursued fusion in the UK.
Both Tokamak Energy and KBSI are developing a magnetic confinement (tokamak) approach to fusion energy; TAE Tech is developing a beam-driven approach and Lawrence Livermore is developing an inertial confinement approach.
Not on this list are entities in the sector that have historically pursued a trade secret strategy, as opposed to filing patent applications which are publicly disclosed. It will be very interesting to see if this list of key innovators changes over the coming years, as previously low patent filers potentially become more patent-oriented.
Particular technologies
Figure 4 shows the key areas of innovation in the fusion sector over the last ten years. One area of technology stands out as a leading area of innovation: magnets and magnetic properties. Magnets are a key component in many current fusion reactor designs as they are necessary in confining plasma. Of particular interest are high temperature superconductors.
Figure 4: Ten-year trend - patent families by technology - nuclear fusion
(Patent family = A set of patent applications and/or granted patents across multiple countries that protect the same invention and were filed by a common applicant.)
High temperature super conductors
Figure 5: Thirty-year trend - global priority filings - high temperature superconductor innovations
Figure 5 shows new filings for high temperature superconductor technology overall (not just in fusion). Although numbers are perhaps too low to determine an accurate trend, the recent trajectory appears to be upward, which correlates with a general interest in superconductor technology. The furore surrounding recent claims about LK-99 suggests that high temperature superconductors are seen as game changing for many industries.
Figure 6: Ten-year trend - top filers - high temperature superconductor innovations
Tokamak Energy is located towards the top of the list of high filers in this area, indicating their expertise, with about two-thirds of Tokamak filings related to high temperature superconductor technology. At the top of the list is the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, which is primarily focussed on electric power and utility but also beginning to foray into fusion technology.
We also see big engineering names including Toshiba and Siemens appear, which might be expected given the potential importance of this technology across sectors.
We also see the appearance of Commonwealth Fusion Systems which, as mentioned above, recently received investment of about USD 1.8bn (after the applications shown here were filed). It will be extremely interesting to revisit this analysis in several years to see whether Commonwealth Fusion Systems continues to focus on high temperature superconductors or places efforts elsewhere on fusion development.
Nuclear fission
The other side of the nuclear coin is energy from nuclear fission. Fission power has long been touted as a reliable, and increasingly safe, route to climate change mitigation. Over the last fifty years, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that the equivalent of seventy gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions have been avoided through using nuclear power. Along with other forms of green energy, particularly renewables (e.g., wind power, as also covered in this report), nuclear fission has a significant role to play in achieving carbon neutrality, while the world awaits commercially viable fusion power.
Figure 7: Seventy-year trend (1951-2021) - global priority filings – nuclear fission
Figure 7 shows seventy years of new fission filings (1951-2021), as a useful comparison to the fusion filings shown in Figure 1. It shows a similar trend to the fusion sector, making the late 1970s and 1980s the apparent height of innovation in the nuclear industries. However, where the fusion industry clearly plateaued (or slightly increased) in the number of new patents filings over recent years, the fission sector has seen a more continued downward trend since its peak, barring a burst of activity around 2011 and 2012, likely corresponding to the aftermath of the Fukushima incident.
While tempting to correlate a slight waning in fission patents with the moderate increase in fusion patents, it remains important to note that – for any given year – there are significantly more filings in the fission sector. This is still perhaps due to the maturity and commercial implementation of fission technologies.
Small Modular Reactors and Microreactors
Given the number of filings and breadth of technologies relevant to nuclear fission, it is hard to pinpoint precise technology trends from the macro-data. Even so, one area of technology getting a lot of recent attention is the concept of small modular reactors. These are reactors envisaged to provide up to 300MW(e) per reactor – compared to approximately 1GW(e) achievable by many ‘full size’ reactors – with the key technology advantages implied in the name.
They are small reactors, often designed as significantly smaller than a conventional nuclear power station. The footprint of SMRs makes them well-suited for installation on sites that would be impossible for a traditional plant.
As modular reactors, they make it possible to prefabricate systems and components off-site and transport separately on-site for installation, significantly reducing set-up and maintenance costs.
Moreover, the designs are typically simpler and normally involve passive safety systems which remove a need for active systems to shut down a reactor (which are possible fail points).
SMRs are seen as a key power generating technology for rural and remote areas which may struggle with main grid connections. On the main grid as well, they are seen as a key technology for power provision that can be paired with other sources of energy to smooth out power production in a hybrid energy system.
Figure 8: Forty-year trend - global priority filings - small modular reactors and microreactors
Figure 8 shows new patent filings for SMRs, in which there was historically low interest throughout the 2000s (and earlier), followed by a sharp increase in filings from 2012 onwards, and a generally continued interest (at least compared to historic trends) throughout the 2010s. Similar to overall filing trends in Figure 7, the sudden increase in SMR patents correlates with the 2011 Fukushima nuclear incident, prompting a rethink in the nuclear industry for different, and safer, reactor technology.
The recent increase in filings post 2020 is noteworthy and appears to result from further refinement of the SMR concept into microreactors. This subset of SMRs is typically designed to produce up to 10 MW(e), have even smaller footprints than SMRs and further advantages for deployment in remote areas which might desire backup generation.
Top filing entities
Figure 9 shows the top filers in the field of SMRs (and microreactors). Here we see a few notable entries ahead of the curve (i.e., pre- Fukushima), in Westinghouse and Terrapower, as well as prolific new filers post-2011.
Figure 9: Fifteen-year trend - top filers - small modular reactors and microreactors
Notable from this graph is the relative consistency of Westinghouse in technology developments (the American nuclear arm of Toshiba until 2018), the recent entry of Rolls Royce into the field, and the drop-off in filings from Babcock and Wilcox, which can be attributed to the termination of their SMR project in 2017 (with the writing on the wall probably sometime before that).
Most entries on this list are large engineering entities with interests that extend well beyond SMRs, or even the nuclear industry. Therefore, it is notable to see smaller companies, such as Nuscale and Terrapower, appear alongside them.
It will be interesting to see how the patent strategies for these smaller entities develop over time, and if new, small organisations enter the field. Moreover, there is significant overlap in SMR technology with other technology sectors such as cancer treatment and isotope generation. With a focus in the sector now on proving SMR technology works for its desired purpose, it will be interesting to see if the innovators listed here start innovating elsewhere and appearing alongside historic filers in other sectors.
Richard Bray
Partner
Matthew Bennett
Associate