Hidden Champion #6 - Focused Energy

For decades, nuclear fusion has been regarded as the “Holy Grail” of energy generation. The idea behind it is as fascinating as it is ambitious: To replicate the process that has made our sun shine for billions of years on Earth in a controlled manner. If this project succeeds on an industrial scale, the global hunger for energy could be satisfied with minimal fuel requirements and virtually no fossil fuels.
The Darmstadt-based company Focused Energy is working on precisely this vision, which aims to lay the foundations for a completely new, virtually unlimited source of energy.

Unlike conventional nuclear power plants, which split heavy atomic nuclei, fusion takes the opposite approach. Under extreme pressure and at enormous temperatures, light hydrogen isotopes fuse together. The result of this reaction is helium – and a huge amount of released energy.
The great advantage of this approach is obvious: the required fuel is available on earth in almost unlimited quantities. At the same time, nuclear fusion produces significantly less long-lived radioactive waste than conventional nuclear fission, and there is no risk of uncontrollable chain reactions.

Numerous institutes and companies around the world are researching different methods to make starfire technically usable. Laser fusion is currently attracting a great deal of attention. In this process, huge high-power lasers focus enormous amounts of energy precisely onto a tiny fusion target. Within fractions of a second, conditions are created that otherwise only exist inside stars.
For a long time, this was considered a purely futuristic project. But in 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility in the USA achieved a historic milestone: for the first time, a controlled fusion reaction generated more energy than was needed to ignite it using lasers. Since then, laser fusion has left the purely theoretical realm and is considered a technology with real industrial potential.

In this highly dynamic environment, Focused Energy has positioned itself as one of the pioneers. The Darmstadt-based company is not only further developing the actual fusion technology. It is also working in parallel to build the necessary industrial infrastructure for later commercialization.
The vision behind this goes far beyond a single power plant: Focused Energy wants to create the basis for a completely new high-tech and energy industry. Its most visible symbol could become the first commercial laser fusion power plant in Germany.

At the heart of this technology are high-power lasers, without which ignition would be impossible. Many of the most modern laser systems are based on special materials doped with neodymium. Only they are able to bundle enormous amounts of energy efficiently and in an extremely short time.
No laser fusion without high-power lasers – and neodymium is one of their most important key raw materials.
The work of Focused Energy thus impressively demonstrates how closely the clean energy supply of the future is linked to strategic commodities, state-of-the-art photonics and European high technology.
If this technology can be successfully industrialized, mankind would have an almost inexhaustible source of energy at its disposal in the long term – with minimal fuel requirements and independent of fossil fuels.