Brenda Marie Rivers
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced development arm has made progress toward its goal of building a compact fusion reactor that may be used to power large aircraft or a town of 80K homes, The Drive reported Friday.
Skunk Works, which has been working on the CFR project since 2014, designed the T5 experimental fusion reactor to manage the behavior of high-energy plasma and power a thermal generator.
"The work we have done today verifies our models and shows that the physics we are talking about – the basis of what we are trying to do – is sound," Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager of Skunk Works, told Aviation Week in an interview.
Lockheed said it aims to complete a prototype for the nuclear reactor later this year or in 2020.
