Type One Energy licenses ORNL’s cryogenic pellet fuelling technology

Fuel cycle technology now moves from ORNL’s labs toward the pellet production rates commercial fusion reactors will require

(Image courtesy of ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Photo: Alonda Hines)

Type One Energy‘s stellarator ambitions at TVA’s Bull Run Energy Complex depend on solving a problem few outside the fuel cycle community track closely. Oak Ridge National Laboratory says no current pellet injector can produce pellets at the rates required. A license signed August 5, 2026, transfers four ORNL cryogenic pellet fuelling inventions to the company, giving it a fuelling technology base for the project it is building as OEM for TVA.

A fuelling gap ORNL says no current injector can close

Fusion reactors running on deuterium and tritium require continuous refuelling to replace ions consumed in the reaction and lost from the confining magnetic fields. Deuterium is relatively abundant and can be handled with conventional equipment. Tritium’s scarcity and radioactivity present unique challenges for reprocessing and containment, and ORNL states that no current pellet injectors are able to produce pellets at required rates.

Cryogenic pellet fuelling addresses that gap by forming solid hydrogen pellets at temperatures just above absolute zero and firing them into the plasma at high speed. ORNL says the method fuels the plasma core more effectively than alternatives such as gas puffing and contributes to improved plasma performance. The four inventions now licensed to Type One Energy address that fuel performance, containment, and recirculation gap directly.

Four cryogenic pellet injection inventions licensed to Type One Energy

Four ORNL inventions make up the license. A tritium-compatible cryogenic pellet gas gun uses real-time pellet size control and a simplified, robust design intended to minimize stress-induced failures for reliable, long-term operation in fusion environments. A tritium-compatible cryogenic screw extruder maintains hermetic containment during continuous pellet production across a range of extrusion temperatures, flow rates, cross sections, and isotope mixtures.

A pressure relief device provides overpressure protection through repeated operation in tritium fuel systems below 20 kelvin, protecting injector seals. A solid conveyance system using a single phase change method recirculates excess extrusion into gas for pellet production, reducing tritium inventory and removing the need for external gas handling equipment. ORNL says the technologies together address gaps in fuel performance, containment, and recirculation by enabling an extrusion system capable of producing pellets at rates appropriate for reactor operations.

What the license adds to Type One Energy’s Bull Run build

The agreement extends a relationship that predates it. Type One Energy and ORNL have previously worked together on a high-heat-flux test facility and on a joint project through the DOE’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy program, and ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer called the license “an exciting next step” in that partnership, moving the lab’s fuelling research “out of the lab and into application.” Type One Energy Chief Science and Engineering Officer John Canik said fuelling the fusion reaction with high repetition and high reliability is one of the most essential technologies for continuous generation of fusion power. Shaun Gleason, ORNL’s director of Partnerships, said the partnership moves ORNL innovations into the marketplace, strengthening a regional economic driver while accelerating commercialisation of technologies critical to the future of fusion energy.

That fuelling technology now sits alongside the rest of what Type One Energy is building at Bull Run. The company is the technology provider and original equipment manufacturer to TVA’s Infinity Two project, and Infinity One, the engineering verification stellarator and workforce training platform it will operate and deploy, has construction beginning in November 2026, according to CEO Christofer Mowry, with completion targeted for late 2028 or early 2029, according to SVP Matt Miles. Infinity Two, the commercial power plant phase, is targeted to deliver electricity to the grid by 2034, Miles said, describing it as a separate undertaking from Infinity One and “its own animal.”

The license also lands alongside a run of other milestones. Type One Energy’s stellarator physics basis was published as a peer-reviewed series in the Journal of Plasma Physics in 2025. Infinity Two’s initial design passed a formal review board that included outside experts from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Westinghouse Electric Company, with Princeton’s Hutch Neilson calling it the first serious fusion power plant design he had seen. Type One Energy has also submitted a byproduct material license application for Bull Run.

None of that moves fuel into the plasma. ORNL says the licensed technologies are built to produce pellets at rates appropriate for reactor operations, the specific capability the lab says no current injector has achieved. Whether Type One Energy’s build schedule and that capability arrive in step is now a question the license has made real rather than theoretical.