Uncommon Thinkers: Zap’s Uri Shumlak wrestles with fusion energy in pursuit of carbon-free power

Editor’s note: This is part of a series profiling five of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 12. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.

When he was growing up in Houston, Uri Shumlak used to pump gas at a local station. He remembers the oil embargo and gas shortages in the 1970s that caused drivers to line up for blocks, waiting and hoping to fill up their tanks.

“Even then, as a kid, I recognized that energy and our ability to produce power was so important I thought … there must be a better way than in gasoline,” he said.

Then in 1979 came the partial meltdown of a nuclear power reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

“It actually more piqued my interest than frightened it,” Shumlak said. “I wanted to learn more about nuclear energy and what its promises were for providing clean energy.”

Shumlak — an uncommon thinker to the core — followed the thread of these impactful events, ultimately co-founding Zap Energy, a fusion power company based in Everett, Wash., and becoming a lauded professor at the University of Washington. In seven years, Zap has raised more than $330 million from investors and has a 150-person team that’s pursuing a nearly limitless source of carbon-free power.

The path hasn’t been easy — a failed first startup nearly soured Shumlak on entrepreneurship and fusion energy is one of the hardest challenges humans have tackled. The physicist is humble, but undaunted in his pursuit.

“It is such an important task … the potential to deliver fusion energy to civilization,” he said. “I’ve devoted my career to try to work on these very challenging but important topics.”

UW Professor Bhuvana Srinivasan was a graduate student with Shumlak and is now a colleague. She admires his rigorous pursuit of a fundamental understanding of his approach to fusion power. Srinivasan praised his mentorship as respectful, encouraging, and striking the right balance between support and independence for students doing experiments that go “into unknown territory.”

“He fosters creativity,” she said, and when it comes to the Uncommon Thinkers recognition, “he’s absolutely deserving of such an award.”

In pursuit of fusion

Fusion energy is being created all the time by the sun and stars — but efficiently replicating the reactions on earth has so far eluded physicists. The reaction requires devices generating enough heat and pressure for a long enough time to slam light atoms together and make them stick.

Shumlak’s interest in fusion was sparked in a high school physics class and he earned an undergrad degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M — though it included only one course in fusion, with most of the focus on atom-splitting fission, which powers today’s nuclear reactors. He selected the University of California, Berkeley, for his Ph.D. as researchers there were actively investigating fusion.

At the time the research was centered on large, super expensive fusion devices with complicated systems of lasers and giant magnets — projects like the experimental, academic reactors at Princeton University, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the international fusion effort called ITER.

Shumlak deviated from the mainstream approach, pursuing smaller devices with simpler engineering.

“I just thought they were more elegant,” he said.

Shumlak was particularly interested in the physics of plasma, which is a state of matter (along with liquid, solid and gas) and a condition essential for creating fusion. The prevailing thought had been that plasmas are static nature. But from experiments he’d done, Shumlak knew they were dynamic and could move in a flow.

He took a job at the UW, which had a history of studying alternative fusion concepts, and continued pursuing this line of inquiry. Shumlak joined the UW’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and was working on theories and simulations of a concept called Z pinch that relies on flowing plasma to contain and compress the matter.

He engaged with researchers in other departments and made a fortuitous connection with electrical engineering professor Brian Nelson.

Nelson was “a really great experimentalist,” Shumlak said, and they started building and testing Z pinch devices.

‘Doing something great and beautiful’

The Z pinch technology proved promising for plasma creation — and could also produce what’s known as extreme UV light. The light has super short wavelengths and there was a potential application in semiconductor fabrication, so Shumlak and Nelson co-founded a startup called Zplasma to commercialize the tech. The business was unable to compete against a more established company in the field. It folded after six years.

Following the experience, Shumlak wasn’t interested in taking the startup plunge again.

But soon after, he and Nelson landed an ARPA-E grant, which is designed to support the development and commercialization of energy technologies, pushing them back into the business arena.

The two engineers partnered with Benj Conway, an entrepreneur, investor and former diplomat, to launch Zap Energy. Shumlak is chief scientist, Nelson is chief technologist and Conway is CEO.

The company is named for their original Z pinch experiments, dubbed “ZaP.” And it’s a nod to Shumlak and Nelson’s shared appreciation for Frank Zappa, a prolific, inventive musical artist and composer whose many genres included, perhaps not coincidentally, jazz fusion.

Progress at Zap has accelerated, said Shumlak, as the headcount and footprint of the company rapidly expanded over the past four years. The team is experimenting with its fusion reactor, a device called FuZE-Q, as it works to produce more energy from fusion reactions than they take to produce — an fundamental challenge that fusion scientists everywhere are trying to overcome.

This summer Zap completed construction of its Century system, which allows for research into the many components beyond the reactor that will be needed to create power for the grid.

After so many years in pursuit of fusion energy, Shumlak knows that success is uncertain for Zap or any of the other companies striving to create a commercial fusion product. But he’s hopeful someone will get there, for the sake of civilization.

“We fusion researchers sometimes feel like medieval cathedral builders. You may never see the finished product, but nevertheless, you know you’re doing something great and beautiful,” he said, simply by advancing the science.

“It’s incredibly rewarding,” Shumlak added, “and I can think of no larger impact that you could possibly make than by trying to solve fusion energy.”