Forget the well-worn adage that fusion energy and the promise of virtually unlimited green power is three or more decades away — a Madison startup believes it can develop a market-ready fusion reactor in a third of that time.
The longer time frame generally applies to utility scale reactors that some day could power the electric grid; Realta Fusion, a Madison company that spun off from the University of Wisconsin in September has more modest goals — modular reactors that within a decade could supply abundant energy for heat-intensive industries like plastics and fertilizer manufacturers, oil refineries and other companies that need massive amounts of heat for their processes.