Māori physicists try to recreate fusion energy on Earth

Wellington scientists are trying to recreate fusion energy on Earth, similar to what keeps the Sun hot. Photo / Getty Images

By James Perry of Whakaata Maori

Ratu Mataira is leading a team of scientists in Wellington trying to recreate fusion energy on Earth, similar to what keeps the Sun hot, in the pursuit of a clean energy source to mitigate climate change.

Mataira (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Manu) is the founder and chief executive of OpenStar, a company of young scientists that is attempting to build a fusion reactor to recreate the process seen in the sun where two hydrogen atoms fuse together and create helium.

“Now, we don’t want to do that to make helium. It happens to be the fact that that produces an enormous amount of energy. That’s what keeps our Sun hot and what keeps all the stars in the night sky shining as they do.

“But the question is whether or not we can do that on Earth, whether or not we can do that on a small machine that we can then plug into a steam turbine and make electricity as well.”

Doing so, Mataira says, would mean being able to produce the same amount of electricity currently produced by generators but with fewer emissions.

“We burn fuels today to create heat to drive steam turbines to make electricity. But when we burn those fuels, that creates CO2 that emits into the atmosphere and that creates climate change and global warming.

‘Really comes down to people’

“If we can just eliminate the burning fuel step, and instead fuse hydrogen to create their heat, we eliminate the bad portion of the way we make energy.”

The challenge in replicating the energy generator that is the Sun on Earth is replicating the atmospheric conditions surrounding it.

However, he is excited by the potential of the team of 30 scientists assembled at OpenStar.

“Building or solving any kind of technical challenge, you need to be clever, you need to have particular insight or whatever it is, but actually, it really comes down to people, it comes down to being able to build teams that can do these things.

“It’s not just my clever ideas. I’m very pleased that the company comes up with all sorts of clever stuff now that I had nothing to do with. I just turn up to meetings, and people have solved lots of problems.”

Mataira says he has had a lifelong fascination with how things work, and physics appealed to his inquisitive nature.

Something ‘to be useful for’

“Then, as I was growing up, eventually I also realised it was important to be useful, that there were lots of problems in the world that needed people working on them. And it happens to be a bit of a cosmic coincidence and fusion is the thing that I thought I could be useful for.”

While he is looking for solutions to global emissions, he is drawing inspiration from his kuia, Dame Katerina Te Heikōkō Mataira, who was an instrumental force in the revitalisation of te reo Māori.

“I’m particularly lucky to have such a strong role model as my grandmother. How it was specifically for me was just a huge challenge that was put in front of her to make a difference that she did to help save te reo Māori from extinction.

“Even when I’m looking at fusion, saving te reo seems like an enormous task that she rose to.”

OpenStar has been developing a prototype reactor for the past year, the first of many Mataira says, before they’re able to put a machine to market.

“We have a duty to see this concept through. If it’s not going to work, and that might well be the case, we need to prove that that is the case. We can’t just give up and say this looks very hard.

“We need to give it our best shot. And hopefully, it works and that will be absolutely fantastic.”