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The failure to pass the BBB legislation is disastrous for the US goals to expeditiously and aggressively address climate change, so it’s heartening to read that cities are taking matters into their own hands. In Iowa, Ames City announced plans to achieve net zero by 2050, cutting GHGs by 83% by 2030.
London and Dhaka may be separated by thousands of miles and multiple time zones, but we are united by strong and historic bonds that transcend geography and bring us closer together in today’s globalised world.
London, for example, is home to a Bangladeshi-origin community of more than 200,000, based mainly in the East End and around the cultural hub of Brick Lane, which makes a significant and positive contribution to the city’s economy. London and Dhaka’s relationship is not only based on business; it is also rooted in human connections between family and friends in the diaspora. This means we share a much deeper affinity, not to mention a mutual love of spicy food and cricket.
Monday December 27, 2021 ·
Scientists at MIT last week announced they are close to designing a nuclear fusion system that could be capable of creating clean energy by the end of the decade, providing hope of reaching “Zero 50” thanks to investments from the private sector.
For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way to contain and sustain it. In theory, fusion could yield inexpensive and unlimited zero-emissions electricity, without producing any significant radioactive waste, as fission does in traditional nuclear power plants. www.bostonglobe.com/...
Nuclear fusion is defined as a reaction that occurs when two or more atomic nuclei are joined to create a new atomic nucleus along with other subatomic particles. According to the Department of Energy:
Nuclear Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. In a fusion reaction, two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. The process releases energy because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei. The leftover mass becomes energy. Einstein’s equation (E=mc2), which says in part that mass and energy can be converted into each other, explains why this process occurs. If scientists develop a way to harness energy from fusion in machines on Earth, it could be an important method of energy production.
A Cambridge institution Commonwealth Fusion Systems has begun construction of a $1.8 billion nuclear reactor on 47 acres in Devens, MA, with funds coming from such private investors as Google and Bill Gates.
“It may sound like science fiction, but the science of fusion is real, and the recent scientific advancements are game-changing,” said Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and cofounder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. “These advancements aren’t incremental; they are quantum leap improvements. . . . We’re in a new era of actually delivering real energy systems.”
Whyte’s MIT team, along with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, last fall demonstrated a decrease in the amount of space and money needed to create “the most powerful magnetic field of its kind on Earth, a critical component of the prototype reactor they’re building in Devens.”
“We have come a long way,” said Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, who compared their advance to similar breakthroughs that made flight possible. “We’re a pretty conservative science bunch, but we’re pretty confident.”
Not so fast, reports Slate Magazine, casting a critical eye on “the startups” [which] all promise limitless clean energy: power from nuclear fusion and a rapid transformation of our energy supply away from fossil fuels.”
... if you listen to the rhetoric coming out of some of those fusion startups, you’re led to believe that it will be much cheaper to build, maintain, run, and decommission super-high-tech fusion plants than an equivalent coal plant. That is, it’s easier to set up a nuclear magnetic bottle and mimic the inner workings of the sun than it is to throw a rock into a raging fire. That, my friends, is bat-guano insane. As the Theranos trial is making clear, it’s not so easy to tell the difference between puffery and outright fraud. In my opinion, anyone telling investors that they’re going to produce energy at a third of the price of coal should brush up on the George Costanza defense: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Writing for The Week, reporter James Pethokoukis asks Is nuclear fusion finally for real? Some very rich people seem to think so. Honing in on MIT/Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), he notes that the project has attracted more than double the investment of other companies experimenting with nuclear fusion.
Replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean power doesn't fully capture the potential of nuclear fusion. Clean, cheap, abundant energy could, for instance, help produce hydrogen for fuel, power giant machines to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and desalinate water on a large scale. No longer would concerns about energy and climate change limit our aspirations, even if they just involve energy-intensive Bitcoin mining.
EE Times notes in Breakthrough in Efficient Powering of Fusion Energy significant investment in late 2021 because of an understanding of the significance of fusion in the transformation to clean energy.
“The race to commercialize fusion will gather further pace next year as fusion companies make further technology advances,” Kelsall concluded. “Applications developed within the fusion sector will present substantial crossover opportunities in different industries, including aerospace, industry, and health care. 2022 will see the public and private sectors continue to work closely, to capitalize on the immense opportunities that fusion offers. This augurs well for the future.”
Scientists at MIT last week announced they are close to designing a nuclear fusion system that could be capable of creating clean energy by the end of the decade, providing hope of reaching “Zero 50” thanks to investments from the private sector.
For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way to contain and sustain it. In theory, fusion could yield inexpensive and unlimited zero-emissions electricity, without producing any significant radioactive waste, as fission does in traditional nuclear power plants. www.bostonglobe.com/...
Nuclear fusion is defined as a reaction that occurs when two or more atomic nuclei are joined to create a new atomic nucleus along with other subatomic particles. According to the Department of Energy:
Nuclear Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. In a fusion reaction, two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. The process releases energy because the total mass of the resulting single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei. The leftover mass becomes energy. Einstein’s equation (E=mc2), which says in part that mass and energy can be converted into each other, explains why this process occurs. If scientists develop a way to harness energy from fusion in machines on Earth, it could be an important method of energy production.
A Cambridge institution Commonwealth Fusion Systems has begun construction of a $1.8 billion nuclear reactor on 47 acres in Devens, MA, with funds coming from such private investors as Google and Bill Gates.
“It may sound like science fiction, but the science of fusion is real, and the recent scientific advancements are game-changing,” said Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and cofounder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. “These advancements aren’t incremental; they are quantum leap improvements. . . . We’re in a new era of actually delivering real energy systems.”
Whyte’s MIT team, along with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, last fall demonstrated a decrease in the amount of space and money needed to create “the most powerful magnetic field of its kind on Earth, a critical component of the prototype reactor they’re building in Devens.”
“We have come a long way,” said Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, who compared their advance to similar breakthroughs that made flight possible. “We’re a pretty conservative science bunch, but we’re pretty confident.”
Not so fast, reports Slate Magazine, casting a critical eye on “the startups” [which] all promise limitless clean energy: power from nuclear fusion and a rapid transformation of our energy supply away from fossil fuels.”
... if you listen to the rhetoric coming out of some of those fusion startups, you’re led to believe that it will be much cheaper to build, maintain, run, and decommission super-high-tech fusion plants than an equivalent coal plant. That is, it’s easier to set up a nuclear magnetic bottle and mimic the inner workings of the sun than it is to throw a rock into a raging fire. That, my friends, is bat-guano insane. As the Theranos trial is making clear, it’s not so easy to tell the difference between puffery and outright fraud. In my opinion, anyone telling investors that they’re going to produce energy at a third of the price of coal should brush up on the George Costanza defense: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Writing for The Week, reporter James Pethokoukis asks Is nuclear fusion finally for real? Some very rich people seem to think so. Honing in on MIT/Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), he notes that the project has attracted more than double the investment of other companies experimenting with nuclear fusion.
Replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean power doesn't fully capture the potential of nuclear fusion. Clean, cheap, abundant energy could, for instance, help produce hydrogen for fuel, power giant machines to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and desalinate water on a large scale. No longer would concerns about energy and climate change limit our aspirations, even if they just involve energy-intensive Bitcoin mining.
EE Times notes in Breakthrough in Efficient Powering of Fusion Energy significant investment in late 2021 because of an understanding of the significance of fusion in the transformation to clean energy.
“The race to commercialize fusion will gather further pace next year as fusion companies make further technology advances,” Kelsall concluded. “Applications developed within the fusion sector will present substantial crossover opportunities in different industries, including aerospace, industry, and health care. 2022 will see the public and private sectors continue to work closely, to capitalize on the immense opportunities that fusion offers. This augurs well for the future.”
The failure to pass the BBB legislation is disastrous for the US goals to expeditiously and aggressively address climate change, so it’s heartening to read that cities are taking matters into their own hands. In Iowa, Ames City announced plans to achieve net zero by 2050, cutting GHGs by 83% by 2030.
London and Dhaka may be separated by thousands of miles and multiple time zones, but we are united by strong and historic bonds that transcend geography and bring us closer together in today’s globalised world.
London, for example, is home to a Bangladeshi-origin community of more than 200,000, based mainly in the East End and around the cultural hub of Brick Lane, which makes a significant and positive contribution to the city’s economy. London and Dhaka’s relationship is not only based on business; it is also rooted in human connections between family and friends in the diaspora. This means we share a much deeper affinity, not to mention a mutual love of spicy food and cricket.
Chasing Energy’s Holy Grail: Was 2021 Fusion Power’s Breakthrough Year?
By Edd Gent
-Dec 27, 2021
Few technologies encapsulate the techno-utopian dream as much as fusion power, but its promise of limitless renewable energy has always remained tantalizingly out of reach. A flurry of developments in the last six months suggest that might be starting to change.
The old joke is that fusion power is 30 years away, and always will be. Nonetheless, there’s growing optimism that more than 70 years after the first designs for a fusion reactor were conceived, we may be just a decade away from making the idea a reality.
No doubt, the road to a world where fusion supplies a significant proportion of the world’s power is a long and uncertain one. But the last six months have seen a massive influx of investment and a series of technical breakthroughs that suggest the field may finally be maturing.
“Fusion is coming, faster than you expect,” Andrew Holland, chief executive of the newly formed Fusion Industry Association, recently told the Financial Times.
The promise of fusion power lies in the fact that it can convert tiny amounts of highly abundant fuel into enormous amounts of energy. And while it does produce some radioactive waste, it only sticks around for about 100 years, compared to thousands for conventional nuclear plants.
Part of the reason the technology is so alluring is that we already know how to create controlled fusion reactions—researchers at Los Alamos National Lab achieved the milestone as far back as 1958. The challenge is getting fusion reactions to generate more energy than is required to sustain them, known as net energy gain and something no-one has managed to achieve so far.
But we seem to be getting closer. In May, Chinese scientists managed to maintain a fusion reaction at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, considerably longer than previous experiments and a major step towards uninterrupted fusion reactions. And in August, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created a fusion reaction that generated 1.3 megajoules of energy by firing an array of lasers at a pellet of hydrogen, with early data suggesting the output was enough to make the reaction self-sustaining.
The private fusion power industry has also come on in leaps and bounds this year. In September, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) unveiled the world’s most powerful high-temperature superconducting magnet, which it plans to use to confine fusion reactions in a test reactor that will come online by 2025.
Even more telling than the technical breakthroughs though, is the flood of investments coming into this space. CFS leads the pack after raising more than $1.8 billion at the start of December, roughly doubling the total funding the sector had received up to then. It came less than a month after Helion Energy announced it had received a record-breaking $500 million, with another $1.7 billion committed if it reaches performance milestones.
There are at least 35 fusion energy startups worldwide, according to the Fusion Industry Association, and they are pursuing a variety of designs. The most popular remains the tried-and-tested tokamak, which uses powerful magnets to contain the reaction, but others include firing projectiles at specially crafted lumps of fuel or using steam-powered pistons to compress plasma and initiate a fusion reaction. Several projects have aggressive timelines, targeting test plants that can demonstrate net energy gain by the middle of this decade.
How realistic those goals are is certainly debatable. The largest and most well-resourced fusion project remains the experimental ITER reactor, a multinational collaboration that has been running since the ‘90s and started construction in 2013. The project has been beset by repeated delays and is now aiming to achieve fusion by 2025, with a projected total cost of around €20 billion ($22.7 billion as of this writing).
There’s hope that leaner private efforts are able to take more risks that could potentially accelerate progress, but critics are keen to point out that until someone can demonstrate net energy gain, investors are taking a big bet on the future of fusion. And given the discrepancy between ITER’s costs and the money committed so far, it looks likely they’ll need to significantly up their stakes. It’s also important to note that achieving net energy gain is not some kind of magic threshold beyond which all problems have been solved.
“Net positive energy is a long distance away from net positive power, which is a system that can put out more power than it uses, ultimately as electricity on the grid,” Adam Stein, a senior nuclear energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, told The Wall Street Journal. “These are still demonstration projects we’re looking at.”
If, and when, that milestone is reached, it will still take billions of dollars and many years to build enough reactors for fusion power to make a significant contribution to the grid. So, anyone seeing the technology as a Hail Mary to solve climate change is likely to be disappointed.
Despite all these challenges though, momentum seems to be growing. While investors may be taking a gamble, it’s one they weren’t willing to bet on just a few years ago, which suggests they see genuine progress.
There’s also growing recognition of the important role fusion could play in our future energy mix in public policy circles. There was a roundtable on the technology at the COP 26 climate talks earlier this year, and the UK government recently announced a $250 million investment in a fusion reactor due to start generating power by 2040.
Whether 2021 will end up being a turning point for fusion technology remains to be seen. But if it is, it’s hard to overstate the potential impact. “Fusion is a step change in the way humans get energy. In the history of humanity this might rank alongside the mastery of fire,” Phil Larochelle, from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, told the Financial Times.
Image Credit: Tyler van der Hoeven / Unsplash
FEATURE: Nuclear fusion in spotlight as world seeks clean energy future
By Takaki Tominaga, KYODO NEWS - Dec 27, 2021 -
As world leaders vow to accelerate climate action to avert catastrophic changes to the planet, nuclear fusion is gathering momentum as a zero-emission energy source that is considered safer than current nuclear fission technology.
Though the next-generation energy source may face opposition in Japan, which suffered a major nuclear accident triggered by a massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami, experts say the nation should keep pace with developments as the technology may be viable as soon as the 2040s.
Fusion energy is produced when light atomic nuclei are merged to form a heavier nucleus. The mass of the resulting nucleus is less than that of the original two, and the leftover mass becomes energy.
The process of fusion powers the sun.
Experts say that unlike nuclear power generation, which involves fission chain reactions that require control to prevent a runaway reaction that would lead to accidents, fusion reaction ends if fuel runs short or plasma becomes unstable.
There are still many hurdles to clear to get to the stage of harnessing fusion energy. But Satoshi Konishi, a professor at Kyoto University's Institute of Advanced Energy, says the race has already begun and Japan should keep up.
Satoshi Konishi (L), a professor at Kyoto University's Institute of Advanced Energy, and Taka Nagao, chief executive officer of Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd., show a nuclear fusion device in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, on Nov. 10, 2021. (Kyodo)
"Changes in a primary energy source usually arrive a lot later than technological innovation," said Konishi during a recent interview, pointing to history that shows the true era of oil arrived decades after people actually developed the ability to drill for it.
"We are already locking horns in a crucial battle to gain strongholds at the front line of fusion energy technology," said Konishi, who expects fusion-derived energy to be contributing to power grids for the first time in the 2040s to 2050s.
Fusion came into the spotlight recently when the topic was discussed for the first time in a panel session at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, with it bringing interest due to the fact it produces near-limitless amounts of energy without emitting greenhouse gasses.
"This event right now is one of those milestones" in fusion energy history, said Jane Hotchkiss, president of U.S. nongovernment organization Energy for the Common Good, during the session of the convention, known as COP26, held in November 2021 in Scotland.
"We say fusion as an energy source must happen, because we need it for the climate. We need that mitigation opportunity for all humanity," she stressed.
In theory, nuclear fusion could produce a terajoule of energy, which is approximately the amount one person in a developed country consumes over a 60-year period, with just a few grams of a mixture of deuterium and tritium, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Deuterium can be extracted inexpensively from seawater, and tritium can be produced from lithium, which is naturally abundant. The process does not generate highly active, long-lived nuclear waste like nuclear power plants, experts say.
Driven by a sense of urgency, Konishi and Taka Nagao, who worked at an energy-related venture in Tokyo, cofounded startup Kyoto Fusioneering Ltd. together with others in 2019 as they looked to commercialize developments from Kyoto University.
A man checks the status of plasma on a computer screen at Kyoto University's Institute of Advanced Energy in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, on Nov. 10, 2021. (Kyodo)
The company has recently been chosen as a tier-one supplier to Britain's atomic energy authority, the government body responsible for demonstrating the ability to generate electricity from fusion with a spherical tokamak, a device that uses magnetic force in the production of fusion energy.
The two are aiming to build a supply chain to produce the resources needed for the building of fusion reactors, with the company serving as a key link in the chain.
According to Nagao and Konishi, the company's ultimate goal is to create a nuclear fusion industry in Japan, a country regarded as a frontrunner in fusion energy technology.
"If Japan can secure its share from the stage of experimental reactors, it may be able to continue doing so when the stage moves to demonstration, prototype and commercial reactors," Nagao said.
"When fusion reactors are built in other countries, I hope many Japanese companies can export fusion plant devices, something like infrastructure exports," he said while adding building one in Japan is also a possibility.
Japan, which advocated the research and development of fusion as a means to secure clean energy under its latest fiscal stimulus package, takes part in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project called ITER, with the European Union, the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and India as primary members.
In the project, a total of 35 nations have come together to build the world's largest tokamak in France to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale source of energy.
While fusion energy has emerged as key to the pursuit of emissions reduction targets in the future, along with renewable sources like solar and wind power, it is far from risk-free as a fusion reactor still uses radioactive tritium as a fuel.
Makoto Nakamura, an associate professor at the National Institute of Technology, Kushiro College, said it is understandable that people in Japan exhibit a strong aversion to anything nuclear.
Supplied photo shows Makoto Nakamura, an associate professor at the National Institute of Technology, Kushiro College. (Photo courtesy of Makoto Nakamura)(Kyodo)
The country has a unique history of experiencing radiation hazard incidents as it was atomic bombed twice during World War II and suffered the terrible and long-lasting consequences of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
For fusion energy to be accepted by people in Japan, it is essential that benefits and potential hazards are clearly communicated, rather than creating a "safety myth" like the one that made people believe before Fukushima that nuclear plants were not a disaster concern, Nakamura said.
"One such way is showing them how an incident will affect people's health and environment if large amounts of radioactive materials leak," he said.
Tritium is generally considered hazardous if a large quantity is taken into the body through the skin, lungs, or stomach. Still, it is much less dangerous than iodine and cesium, byproducts of nuclear fission that became primary concerns after the Fukushima accident.
That said, the issue of how tritium behaves when in an organically bound form and impacts an environment in the long term should be a subject of continuous study, said Nakamura, also a member of an Expert Committee of the Japan Society of Plasma Science and Nuclear Fusion Research.
"Disclosing the potential hazard should be the best way, although there will be a certain number of people who will react negatively," Nakamura said.
Will Nuclear Fusion Ever Power the World?
"The running joke in fusion is that, every year for the last 50 years, it’s been 50 years away. But this time, I think we’re really getting close."
By Daniel Kolitz
Tuesday
Image: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
Only an unusually naive child, or a fossil fuel executive, could sincerely argue that our current energy situation is sustainable. For over 50 years now, well before the scope of the climate crisis was clear, scientists have been working toward an alternative: fusion power (i.e., using the heat from nuclear fusion reactions to generate electricity). Since its inception as a field of study, viable fusion power has always been just around the corner—but this time, that might actually be true. For this week’s Giz Asks, we talked to a number of experts to see if and when fusion power might actually power the world.
Daniel Andruczyk
Associate Research Professor, Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The running joke in fusion is that, every year for the last 50 years, it’s been 50 years away. But this time, I think we’re really getting close.
Potentially, in the next 20-30 years, we’ll have a realistic demonstration of fusion technology as a power source. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France is going to be a huge stepping stone towards that goal. It will be the first demonstration of our ability to get fusion above q=1—that is, to get to the break-even point, where the output energy is equal to the input energy that we need to get the fusion reaction going. But it is also designed to go far beyond that—to get a 10x greater energy output. Which means that, with an input of 50 megawatts of heating power, you’d get 500 megawatts of fusion power.
To be clear, this “output power” will not be going onto the grid or producing electricity. We’re not demonstrating electricity—we’re just demonstrating that we can actually get a plasma and generate the nuclear reactions that we need to do it.
From there, the next step is to get a pilot plant up and running: the first demonstration of putting power on the grid. The National Academy of Sciences put out a report saying that we should get to this point in the U.S. by 2050. We’re not aiming for anything crazy—only 20 megawatts of power onto the grid—but we need to start somewhere.
There are grander designs out there: in Europe and Japan, scientists are looking at a machine called the DEMOnstration Power Plant, which is designed to produce 1-2 gigawatts and could legitimately power cities. In theory, we know how this should work, but the technology is not yet fully developed. One challenge, here, is that the materials you need to build these fusion reactors with—i.e., materials that can survive in the hellish conditions we create inside of these machines—are extremely expensive. So part of the question moving forward is: can we design these things to be nicer to materials? It’s a huge thing, and not entirely understood.
“One challenge, here, is that the materials you need to build these fusion reactors with—i.e., materials that can survive in the hellish conditions we create inside of these machines—are extremely expensive.”
Derek Sutherland
Co-Founder and CEO of CTFusion, Inc., a company dedicated to the development of fusion energy
As a fusion scientist, I’m a bit biased—but my answer is: yes, of course.
This happens to be a very exciting time for the field as a whole. For upwards of 50 years now, we’ve been working on building the scientific foundations of fusion energy—mainly through research and development funded by the Department of Energy, but with substantial international contributions, too.
That foundation is now in place, and a host of private fusion companies are building on it, in the hopes of developing a viable commercial energy source and actually getting it onto the grid. Multiple companies will be demonstrating net gain operation within the decade, with many planning the first commercial units for the 2030s. So this is no longer the perennial “energy of the future”—it will be here (relatively) soon.
As with any new technology, the biggest challenge is building the very first one; after that, the challenge becomes scaling up production to really capture market share. Hopefully, by the end of the 2030s and going into mid-century, you’ll see market share expand, hopefully displacing fossil fuel generation and conventional nuclear energy, and working with renewables like wind and solar to basically do decarbonization, which is our goal here, for climate change.
Technical risks still remain. But in aggregate, that risk is diminishing as far as plasma physics and core technology; we’re now shifting our focus to engineering these systems. That involves technologies like heat exchanges and turbines and compressions. We’ve done that for hundreds of years with heat engines, so we know how it works—we just have to customize it for a fusion heat source.
So there is absolutely still a lot of work to be done—but we’re getting closer and closer.“As a fusion scientist, I’m a bit biased—but my answer is: yes, of course.”
Carlos Romero-Talamas
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The answer is yes, fusion will eventually power most of the world’s energy needs. Over the past 60 years, there has been skepticism and cynicism on the ability for fusion energy to be a viable source of energy. There is a running joke that “fusion is only 20 years away... and will always be.” (The years in the joke vary depending on who you ask, but the punchline is the same.) In the early days of fusion research, there was indeed a high level of optimism, but after decades without fusion, jokes like this one are no surprise. However, to better understand the seeming lack of progress in fusion research, one has to look at the history of fusion funding and how this funding has varied and even stopped for long periods of time. In the 1970s, fusion funding worldwide increased fivefold, but it started to decline in the 1980s until it reached a minimum in the mid-2000s. Pronounced ups and downs in funding have made continuity of experiments and retaining experienced personnel difficult, but the overall funding trend is finally upward and poised to accelerate.
To have an energy reactor powered by fusion energy, you need enough particles confined at high enough temperature for long enough so they can collide head on and fuse (and in the process release enormous amounts of energy). This is called the triple product: density, temperature, and confinement time, and it can be used to compare progress towards net energy gain across different reactor concepts. Tokamaks, the donut-shaped machines that have the best triple product performance so far, achieved the conditions for net gain over 25 years ago, although for very short times. These machines performed as designed and were meant to be an intermediate step toward the ultimate goal of high net energy gain commercial reactors. The natural next step was to fund tokamaks that would have achieved net gain for long periods of time. However, it took until 2006 for the European Union, the U.S., Russia, Korea, Japan, India, and China to agree to build such a machine (now called ITER). The first experiments in ITER are expected in the next four years, even though these were originally scheduled for 2016. The reasons for these delays are not scientific but largely political. The good news is that, in all this time, our modeling and understanding of tokamaks has improved through simulation and experimentation in existing machines, and there is high confidence that ITER will achieve its stated goals. Just as with the computers and cellphones we buy, computer simulations and diagnostics for fusion-relevant experiments have become much better and affordable compared to just a few years ago, enabling refinement of complex physics models with an ever-increasing level of detail.
An eventual fusion reactor may not look like ITER, since its size and cost may make it commercially unattractive. Nevertheless, there have been important developments in critical technologies such as superconducting magnets (required in a tokamak fusion reactor) that will allow for much better confinement than was possible just 10 years ago. This will enable smaller fusion reactors that could be cost effective and with a shorter path to market. The urgency of addressing climate change and decarbonizing our energy sources have given renewed interest in funding fusion energy research.
The number of private companies pursuing commercial fusion continues to increase, with hundreds of millions of dollars already poured into those companies in the last 20 years by both public and private investors. Many of these new ventures are banking on concepts different from the tokamak and, if successful, these would add to the range of fusion reactor options that could power everything from massive electrical generators to small shipping vessels. ITER results will be very important to the entire fusion research community, as many technologies common to all concepts will be tested there. While there is much work to do before getting to the first commercial reactor, including in engineering, regulation, and public acceptance, the pace of development and funding toward that goal is accelerating. At this point, it is not a question of whether we can have fusion reactors to power our world, it is a question of how quickly we can make them affordable and commercially viable.“ Pronounced ups and downs in funding have made continuity of experiments and retaining experienced personnel difficult, but the overall funding trend is finally upward and poised to accelerate.”
Omar A. Hurricane
Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
In the distant future, fusion will likely be part of the energy mix powering the world. Over the next couple of decades, at least, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect fusion to play a role. While there has been great progress in fusion research over the past decade, as we are approaching scientific breakeven, it will take much more energy gain than breakeven to make fusion practical for energy production. Why so long? Even with old known technologies, like fission power, it takes at least a decade to build a power plant. For now, fusion is still a science experiment.
"The running joke in fusion is that, every year for the last 50 years, it’s been 50 years away. But this time, I think we’re really getting close."
By Daniel Kolitz
Tuesday
Image: Benjamin Currie (Gizmodo)
Only an unusually naive child, or a fossil fuel executive, could sincerely argue that our current energy situation is sustainable. For over 50 years now, well before the scope of the climate crisis was clear, scientists have been working toward an alternative: fusion power (i.e., using the heat from nuclear fusion reactions to generate electricity). Since its inception as a field of study, viable fusion power has always been just around the corner—but this time, that might actually be true. For this week’s Giz Asks, we talked to a number of experts to see if and when fusion power might actually power the world.
Steffi Diem
Assistant Professor of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research on the Pegasus-III Experiment is focused on developing innovative fusion reactor startup technologies
If funding for fusion energy development continues to increase, then yes, fusion will power the world in the future. Since the 1990s, funding for fusion research in the United States has been for the science of fusion, not for the development of an energy source. The rest of the world has a wide portfolio of fusion research as well, and we are all racing to harness the power of fusion. Major recent advances in technology and a U.S. fusion community consensus to shift the focus to fusion energy development are bringing us closer to powering the world with fusion. It’s a grand engineering challenge to solve and we are getting closer to commercializing fusion energy. I’m really excited about the direction our research is heading!
Fusion has the potential to provide clean, green energy to the world with zero carbon emissions. The fuel for fusion is extremely energy dense—using the deuterium found in one bathtub’s worth of water combined with the lithium from two laptop batteries (used to breed tritium), this provides enough energy for your entire lifetime with no pollution. This tiny amount of fuel for fusion energy is equivalent to 230 tons of coal that would release 380 tons of pollution. As the world transitions to renewable energy, fusion can step in to complement a diverse energy portfolio (fusion is independent of geography, environmental conditions, and has a compact footprint). The fuel for fusion is hydrogen isotopes, making it widely available and an essentially inexhaustible source of energy.
In the U.S., the fusion community (universities, national laboratories and private companies) has just completed a two-year strategic planning process to identify the remaining challenges to harnessing the power for commercial fusion energy. This effort was kicked off by a National Academies report on creating the conditions for fusion, and resulted in several reports (community consensus report, a FESAC report, and a fast-tracked National Academies report) focused on designing and constructing a fusion pilot plant to demonstrate electricity generation by 2035.
This is a bold and exciting direction for fusion energy research in the U.S. and is backed by recent advances in technology. Researchers have made huge improvements in creating the conditions for fusion by making more efficient and compact tokamaks as well as major advances in laser technology. Advances in additive and advanced manufacturing allow the use of new materials and design of complex structures to survive the harsh fusion environment. High performance, exascale computing enables modeling of entire fusion reactors to design and predict performance in fusion pilot plants. High-temperature superconductors provide access to more compact reactors, which can be a game changer when it comes to fusion power. Interest and investment from private companies provides necessary partners when it comes to realizing fusion as a solution to climate change. And on the horizon is the operation of ITER—the first fusion device that’s been designed to demonstrate we can produce more energy than is used to run the device, a demonstration of a self-sustaining fusion reaction.
Just recently, the fusion field has had two major breakthroughs, with MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ successful demonstration of their high-temperature superconductor and the National Ignition Facility achieving record-breaking yields in laser fusion.
“If funding for fusion energy development continues to increase, then yes, fusion will power the world in the future. Since the 1990s, funding for fusion research in the United States has been for the science of fusion, not for the development of an energy source.”
Assistant Professor of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research on the Pegasus-III Experiment is focused on developing innovative fusion reactor startup technologies
If funding for fusion energy development continues to increase, then yes, fusion will power the world in the future. Since the 1990s, funding for fusion research in the United States has been for the science of fusion, not for the development of an energy source. The rest of the world has a wide portfolio of fusion research as well, and we are all racing to harness the power of fusion. Major recent advances in technology and a U.S. fusion community consensus to shift the focus to fusion energy development are bringing us closer to powering the world with fusion. It’s a grand engineering challenge to solve and we are getting closer to commercializing fusion energy. I’m really excited about the direction our research is heading!
Fusion has the potential to provide clean, green energy to the world with zero carbon emissions. The fuel for fusion is extremely energy dense—using the deuterium found in one bathtub’s worth of water combined with the lithium from two laptop batteries (used to breed tritium), this provides enough energy for your entire lifetime with no pollution. This tiny amount of fuel for fusion energy is equivalent to 230 tons of coal that would release 380 tons of pollution. As the world transitions to renewable energy, fusion can step in to complement a diverse energy portfolio (fusion is independent of geography, environmental conditions, and has a compact footprint). The fuel for fusion is hydrogen isotopes, making it widely available and an essentially inexhaustible source of energy.
In the U.S., the fusion community (universities, national laboratories and private companies) has just completed a two-year strategic planning process to identify the remaining challenges to harnessing the power for commercial fusion energy. This effort was kicked off by a National Academies report on creating the conditions for fusion, and resulted in several reports (community consensus report, a FESAC report, and a fast-tracked National Academies report) focused on designing and constructing a fusion pilot plant to demonstrate electricity generation by 2035.
This is a bold and exciting direction for fusion energy research in the U.S. and is backed by recent advances in technology. Researchers have made huge improvements in creating the conditions for fusion by making more efficient and compact tokamaks as well as major advances in laser technology. Advances in additive and advanced manufacturing allow the use of new materials and design of complex structures to survive the harsh fusion environment. High performance, exascale computing enables modeling of entire fusion reactors to design and predict performance in fusion pilot plants. High-temperature superconductors provide access to more compact reactors, which can be a game changer when it comes to fusion power. Interest and investment from private companies provides necessary partners when it comes to realizing fusion as a solution to climate change. And on the horizon is the operation of ITER—the first fusion device that’s been designed to demonstrate we can produce more energy than is used to run the device, a demonstration of a self-sustaining fusion reaction.
Just recently, the fusion field has had two major breakthroughs, with MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ successful demonstration of their high-temperature superconductor and the National Ignition Facility achieving record-breaking yields in laser fusion.
“If funding for fusion energy development continues to increase, then yes, fusion will power the world in the future. Since the 1990s, funding for fusion research in the United States has been for the science of fusion, not for the development of an energy source.”
Daniel Andruczyk
Associate Research Professor, Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The running joke in fusion is that, every year for the last 50 years, it’s been 50 years away. But this time, I think we’re really getting close.
Potentially, in the next 20-30 years, we’ll have a realistic demonstration of fusion technology as a power source. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France is going to be a huge stepping stone towards that goal. It will be the first demonstration of our ability to get fusion above q=1—that is, to get to the break-even point, where the output energy is equal to the input energy that we need to get the fusion reaction going. But it is also designed to go far beyond that—to get a 10x greater energy output. Which means that, with an input of 50 megawatts of heating power, you’d get 500 megawatts of fusion power.
To be clear, this “output power” will not be going onto the grid or producing electricity. We’re not demonstrating electricity—we’re just demonstrating that we can actually get a plasma and generate the nuclear reactions that we need to do it.
From there, the next step is to get a pilot plant up and running: the first demonstration of putting power on the grid. The National Academy of Sciences put out a report saying that we should get to this point in the U.S. by 2050. We’re not aiming for anything crazy—only 20 megawatts of power onto the grid—but we need to start somewhere.
There are grander designs out there: in Europe and Japan, scientists are looking at a machine called the DEMOnstration Power Plant, which is designed to produce 1-2 gigawatts and could legitimately power cities. In theory, we know how this should work, but the technology is not yet fully developed. One challenge, here, is that the materials you need to build these fusion reactors with—i.e., materials that can survive in the hellish conditions we create inside of these machines—are extremely expensive. So part of the question moving forward is: can we design these things to be nicer to materials? It’s a huge thing, and not entirely understood.
“One challenge, here, is that the materials you need to build these fusion reactors with—i.e., materials that can survive in the hellish conditions we create inside of these machines—are extremely expensive.”
Derek Sutherland
Co-Founder and CEO of CTFusion, Inc., a company dedicated to the development of fusion energy
As a fusion scientist, I’m a bit biased—but my answer is: yes, of course.
This happens to be a very exciting time for the field as a whole. For upwards of 50 years now, we’ve been working on building the scientific foundations of fusion energy—mainly through research and development funded by the Department of Energy, but with substantial international contributions, too.
That foundation is now in place, and a host of private fusion companies are building on it, in the hopes of developing a viable commercial energy source and actually getting it onto the grid. Multiple companies will be demonstrating net gain operation within the decade, with many planning the first commercial units for the 2030s. So this is no longer the perennial “energy of the future”—it will be here (relatively) soon.
As with any new technology, the biggest challenge is building the very first one; after that, the challenge becomes scaling up production to really capture market share. Hopefully, by the end of the 2030s and going into mid-century, you’ll see market share expand, hopefully displacing fossil fuel generation and conventional nuclear energy, and working with renewables like wind and solar to basically do decarbonization, which is our goal here, for climate change.
Technical risks still remain. But in aggregate, that risk is diminishing as far as plasma physics and core technology; we’re now shifting our focus to engineering these systems. That involves technologies like heat exchanges and turbines and compressions. We’ve done that for hundreds of years with heat engines, so we know how it works—we just have to customize it for a fusion heat source.
So there is absolutely still a lot of work to be done—but we’re getting closer and closer.“As a fusion scientist, I’m a bit biased—but my answer is: yes, of course.”
Carlos Romero-Talamas
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The answer is yes, fusion will eventually power most of the world’s energy needs. Over the past 60 years, there has been skepticism and cynicism on the ability for fusion energy to be a viable source of energy. There is a running joke that “fusion is only 20 years away... and will always be.” (The years in the joke vary depending on who you ask, but the punchline is the same.) In the early days of fusion research, there was indeed a high level of optimism, but after decades without fusion, jokes like this one are no surprise. However, to better understand the seeming lack of progress in fusion research, one has to look at the history of fusion funding and how this funding has varied and even stopped for long periods of time. In the 1970s, fusion funding worldwide increased fivefold, but it started to decline in the 1980s until it reached a minimum in the mid-2000s. Pronounced ups and downs in funding have made continuity of experiments and retaining experienced personnel difficult, but the overall funding trend is finally upward and poised to accelerate.
To have an energy reactor powered by fusion energy, you need enough particles confined at high enough temperature for long enough so they can collide head on and fuse (and in the process release enormous amounts of energy). This is called the triple product: density, temperature, and confinement time, and it can be used to compare progress towards net energy gain across different reactor concepts. Tokamaks, the donut-shaped machines that have the best triple product performance so far, achieved the conditions for net gain over 25 years ago, although for very short times. These machines performed as designed and were meant to be an intermediate step toward the ultimate goal of high net energy gain commercial reactors. The natural next step was to fund tokamaks that would have achieved net gain for long periods of time. However, it took until 2006 for the European Union, the U.S., Russia, Korea, Japan, India, and China to agree to build such a machine (now called ITER). The first experiments in ITER are expected in the next four years, even though these were originally scheduled for 2016. The reasons for these delays are not scientific but largely political. The good news is that, in all this time, our modeling and understanding of tokamaks has improved through simulation and experimentation in existing machines, and there is high confidence that ITER will achieve its stated goals. Just as with the computers and cellphones we buy, computer simulations and diagnostics for fusion-relevant experiments have become much better and affordable compared to just a few years ago, enabling refinement of complex physics models with an ever-increasing level of detail.
An eventual fusion reactor may not look like ITER, since its size and cost may make it commercially unattractive. Nevertheless, there have been important developments in critical technologies such as superconducting magnets (required in a tokamak fusion reactor) that will allow for much better confinement than was possible just 10 years ago. This will enable smaller fusion reactors that could be cost effective and with a shorter path to market. The urgency of addressing climate change and decarbonizing our energy sources have given renewed interest in funding fusion energy research.
The number of private companies pursuing commercial fusion continues to increase, with hundreds of millions of dollars already poured into those companies in the last 20 years by both public and private investors. Many of these new ventures are banking on concepts different from the tokamak and, if successful, these would add to the range of fusion reactor options that could power everything from massive electrical generators to small shipping vessels. ITER results will be very important to the entire fusion research community, as many technologies common to all concepts will be tested there. While there is much work to do before getting to the first commercial reactor, including in engineering, regulation, and public acceptance, the pace of development and funding toward that goal is accelerating. At this point, it is not a question of whether we can have fusion reactors to power our world, it is a question of how quickly we can make them affordable and commercially viable.“ Pronounced ups and downs in funding have made continuity of experiments and retaining experienced personnel difficult, but the overall funding trend is finally upward and poised to accelerate.”
Omar A. Hurricane
Chief Scientist for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
In the distant future, fusion will likely be part of the energy mix powering the world. Over the next couple of decades, at least, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect fusion to play a role. While there has been great progress in fusion research over the past decade, as we are approaching scientific breakeven, it will take much more energy gain than breakeven to make fusion practical for energy production. Why so long? Even with old known technologies, like fission power, it takes at least a decade to build a power plant. For now, fusion is still a science experiment.
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