Zap Energy exceeds Mariana Trench-level pressures in pursuit of limitless clean power

Zap Energy announced that its fusion device exceeded pressures found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in a recent test. The Everett, Wash., company said its FuZE-3 machine generated a pressure roughly 10,000 times atmospheric pressure at sea level, or 10 times the pressure at the Mariana Trench bottom. Ben Levitt, Zap's head of R&D, said the test was a proof of principle designed to hit milestones and validate the principle and it did that with flying colors. Zap said the pressure reached 1.6 gigapascal and was 10-fold higher than previous efforts. The company operates two other machines, FuZE-Q and FuZE-3, with FuZE-3 hitting the new milestone. Zap shared it will commission a fifth fusion device called FuZE-A next month to continue testing. The company will present data at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting this week in Long Beach, Calif., and submit to a peer-reviewed journal. Zap said it will also disclose details to the U.S. Department of Energy. Levitt said more improvement is needed for grid power and breakeven may be possible by end of decade.