This story is from The Pulse , a weekly health and science podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Heat, density, time, and a small amount of seawater. In just 20 years, nuclear physicist Mark Henderson says, that simple recipe could power entire cities and help slow the rising tide of climate change for good — if, that is, a few things happen.
ITER is a product of diplomacy. In the s, two longtime foes, the United States and the former Soviet Union, came together with a common mission: to harness this seemingly magical power source for something other than mutual annihilation.
By then, the idea of working together was a more novel concept than fusion power itself. Henderson has dreamed of building a functional commercial fusion energy reactor since he was 14 years old — another physicist in a long line of boosters who believe fusion energy production is not only achievable, but mandatory, if much of humanity is to outlive the lifestyles of its elite.
The potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source is so bright it could blind you. Compress hydrogen isotopes long enough in a super hot environment and its atoms combine to create a new element: helium. In that conversion, a ton of energy is released. Get the recipe just right that is, the sun , and the reaction will essentially heat itself. That means if scientists can figure out a way to reliably produce and sustain nuclear fusion on Earth using elements commonly found in ocean water, virtually unlimited energy could be available at the push of a button — all without the risk of harmful carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, the variability of wind and solar power, and the potential of meltdowns and radioactive waste from nuclear fission.
Researchers have toiled over fusion power since the s and have yet to build a reactor that can produce more energy than it consumes. At that point, 35 countries had joined the project to split the cost and benefits of such an achievement. The final price tag is still up for debate. The U. But if ITER were to operate fully as expected by , it would blow all previous fusion reactor designs out of the water in terms of power production. That, ITER often says, is worth the large sums of public cash the investment requires.
Even though ITER was only a test reactor that would never actually connect to the grid and produce electricity, such a result would be a record-smashing number for fusion reactors compared to its predecessor, a reactor called JET in the U. And the ITER organization has done so, frequently touting its times power gain number, often called the Q ratio.
But when Krivit needed to double-check some figures for a book he was writing, a closer look at the Q ratio ITER promised revealed something concerning, he said.
In reality, the Q ratio only speaks to what happens deep inside the reactor when fusion occurs, not the total amount of energy it takes to run the whole operation, or the actual usable electricity the fusion reaction could produce. TAE Technologies. Though this is a more difficult reaction to achieve—requiring temperatures at least an order of magnitude higher—it has the advantage of not producing the highly energetic neutrons that complicate DT fusion.
FRC is a magnetic confinement method forming a toroidal plasma, but without a toroidal magnetic field Figure 6. TAE is based in Irvine, California. It is hoped this will allow for smaller, more efficient, and less expensive magnets. General Fusion. This Vancouver, British Columbia—based company is pursuing one of the more revolutionary approaches, which it calls magnetized target fusion MTS.
The MTS concept uses a sphere filled with molten lead-lithium, which is then pumped to form a vortex. A pulse of magnetically confined plasma fuel is injected into the vortex, and an array of pistons creates a shock wave in the liquid metal to compress the plasma to fusion conditions.
Heat from the liquid metal will then be captured and used to generate electricity. Tokamak Energy. A UK company, Tokamak Energy is working on magnetic confinement fusion, but employing a tokamak with a more spherical shape, based on a concept developed in the U.
This device, called ST40, has been commissioned and research on it is currently ongoing. Tokamak Energy claims to have achieved plasma temperatures of up to 15 million degrees Celsius.
ITER is not the only undertaking generating excitement in the fusion community. At least a dozen private start-up companies have begun investigating alternative approaches to fusion energy over the past decade see sidebar. Some of them are working on slightly different magnetic confinement methods, others are pursuing truly innovative—if high-risk—methods that could produce dramatic breakthroughs. All of them are looking for paths to fusion that are simpler and less expensive than ITER.
What will come after ITER? The details are still to be determined, but a number of targets are in sight. If all goes well, the technology from ITER should enable electricity generation from fusion, and member nations are not waiting until the late s to begin planning.
Several follow-on devices that will be even higher performance than ITER are in development. Courtesy: China Institute of Plasma Physics. Its initial phase will demonstrate fusion operation at about MW fusion power, but it will eventually be upgraded to at least 2 GW fusion power and MW net generation.
Formal construction of the device is slated to begin in the s, but construction of supporting facilities and key prototype components has already begun at a location in Hefei. Courtesy: EUROfusion. In the U. Until recently, progress toward fusion energy in the U. Funding for the U.
A report from the National Academies of Science in strongly recommended that the U. This plant would likely have net generation of about MW to MW. The preference for a smaller design reflects the economic realities of electricity generation in the U. The study is expected to be completed later this year.
When will we see fusion as a meaningful element of the power mix? In this, it is worth remembering that practical fission generation was first demonstrated in the s, yet it was not until the mids that commercial nuclear plant construction began on a large scale.
Several of the earliest fission plants were public-private partnerships between utilities and the Atomic Energy Commission. The first U. This does suggest, however, that large-scale commercial fusion energy should not be expected before the s, roughly 20 years after ITER begins DT operations. Much of how a fusion plant would be built and operated does not fit within existing NRC regulations, a fact the NRC itself has recognized.
The fusion industry has begun engaging with the NRC on what such a regulatory approach would look like, but no official rulemaking has begun, nor is it likely to until the technology of fusion power plants is considerably clearer.
Both federal and state regulatory environments will need to be adapted for fusion, a process that is likely to be drawn out and subject to extensive litigation. Though this article has focused on scientific and engineering factors, the ultimate deciding factors will be social and economic.
Fusion power plants will be built when investors and public utility commissions begin viewing them as worthwhile investments. Exactly when that point will be reached is difficult to say. It is likely that electricity from the first fusion plants will be expensive compared to other options, though the same was once true about large-scale renewable generation.
Fusion generation is certainly amenable to economies of scale, but the U. The proposed approach of developing a compact fusion pilot plant thus represents a strategic way to develop the technology before scaling up once the investment community has gained confidence in the economics of larger plants. Another important factor is public acceptance and the degree to which fusion will need to contend with perceptions and misconceptions about fission plants.
Both the fusion community and prospective plant owners will need to be proactive in providing effective communication about the technology long before any actual construction begins. It is worth noting that the likely time frame roughly coincides with the period when many U. In such an environment, the advantages of fusion power could well be economically and socially compelling. Generation III nuclear reactors have not shown much ability to overcome the weaknesses of conventional Gen-II light-water reactor….
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With diameters between 17 and 24 meters and weighing up to metric tons each, they are too large to be built elsewhere and transported.
Poloidal Field Coil 6 is shown here inside its cooling cryostat. This article was originally published with the title "Fusion Dreams" in Scientific American , 6, December Fusion's Missing Pieces. Geoff Brumfiel; June Already a subscriber?
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