Zap Energy is the most compact solution to Fusion Energy and does not use complex and costly magnetic coils. They surpassed ARPA-E Alpha Milestones in August 2018. Their reactor is consistently producing neutrons and they received $6.8 million ARPA-E OPEN funding.

* The new Z-pinch has the simplest geometry of any magnetic confinement configuration. It is a cylindrical plasma column.

The sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch has demonstrated long-lived plasmas with fusion-relevant parameters. This Letter presents the first experimental results demonstrating sustained, quasi-steady-state neutron production from the Fusion Z-pinch Experiment (FuZE), operated with a mixture of 20% deuterium/80% hydrogen by volume. Neutron emissions lasting approximately 5 µs are reproducibly observed with pinch currents of approximately 200 kA during an approximately 16 µs period of plasma quiescence. The average neutron yield is estimated to be (1.25±0.45)×100,000 neutrons/pulse and scales with the square of the deuterium concentration. Coincident with the neutron signal, plasma temperatures of 1 − 2 keV.