ENN Group achieves 100 million hydrogen-boron fusion reactions per second

The Hebei-based ENN Group has announced a milestone in clean energy research, achieving hydrogen-boron fusion reactions at a rate exceeding 100 million per second. The experiment was conducted using the EXL-50U (ENN Xuanlong-50), China’s first medium-scale spherical torus experimental device.

This achievement marks the first time a commercial fusion company has successfully performed hydrogen-boron fusion on its own device. Unlike the deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel cycle used in mainstream research projects like ITER, hydrogen-boron fusion utilizes more abundant fuels and primarily produces charged alpha particles rather than high-energy neutrons.

While D-T fusion is easier to achieve, it produces radioactive tritium and high-energy neutrons that can damage reactor materials. Hydrogen-boron fusion is significantly more difficult to sustain, requiring much higher temperatures and stricter confinement conditions, but it offers a potentially cleaner alternative by avoiding the production of high-energy neutrons.