Samuel Aaron Lazerson (Gauss Fusion): The physics of GIGA, a Gigawatt class stellarator power plant for Europe

Gauss Fusion seeks to design and build a stellarator fusion power plant, capable of providing one Gigawatt of electrical energy by the early 2040s. Gauss Fusion was founded in 2022 by commercial companies with experience of supplying ITER, with the goal of taking an industrial approach to bringing fusion energy to the European market. As such, the company comes from a concept-agnostic beginning, making informed and pragmatic decisions based on technical maturity and risk mitigation and aimed at the fastest route to building serial fusion power plants. The choice to pursue magnetic confinement, and stellarators in particular, is one of those decisions. In this talk, the design choices, physics basis, and preliminary designs of this stellarator power plant will be presented.