Fusion is the epitome of “high risk, high reward” scientific research.
If we were to ever successfully harness the forces that power the stars, mankind could have access to power that is almost literally too cheap to meter. However, reaching that goal will be a very expensive, long-term commitment – and it’s also very possible that we may never achieve a commercially viable method of fusion power generation.
Today’s video, by the talented team at Kurzgesagt, explains how fusion works, what experiments are ongoing, and the pros and cons of pursuing fusion power generation.
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How Fusion Works
Fusion involves heating nuclei of atoms – usually isotopes of hydrogen – to temperatures in the millions of degrees. At extreme temperatures, atoms are stripped of their electrons and nuclei move so quickly that they overcome their “mutual repulsion”, joining together to form a heavier nucleus. This process gives off massive amounts of energy that investors and researchers hope will propel mankind into an era of cheap and abundant electricity, but without the downsides of many other forms of energy.
I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.
– Stephen Hawking, award-winning theoretical physicist
Stars are so large that fusion occurs naturally in their cores – but here on Earth, we’re trying a number of complex methods in the hopes of replicating that process to achieve positive net energy.
The Cost of Bottling a Star
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an experimental reactor currently being built in the south of France, will house the world’s largest ever tokamak – a doughnut-shaped reactor that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma. Construction of the facility began in 2013 and is expected to cost €20 billion upon completion in 2021.
Research organizations see ITER as a crucial step in realizing fusion. Though the facility is not designed to generate electricity, it would pave the way for functional reactors.
Competition is Heating Up
There are some who claim that the bureaucracy of government-funded labs is hampering the process. As a result, there is a pack of private companies, fueled by high-profile investors, looking to make commercially-viable fusion into a reality.
Tri Alpha, a company in southern California, is hoping their method of spinning magnetized plasma inside a containment vessel will be a lower-cost method of power generation than ITER. In 2015, they held super-heated hydrogen plasma in a stable state for 5 milliseconds, which is a huge deal in the world of fusion research. The company has attracted over $500 million in investment in the past 20 years, and has the backing of Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen.
Helion Energy, located in Redmond, Washington, believes they are only a few years away from creating nuclear fusion that can be used as a source for electricity. Their reaction is created by colliding two plasma balls made of hydrogen atom cores at one million miles per hour. Helion Energy’s ongoing research is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, which the Trump administration slated for elimination. Thankfully, Helion still counts Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital and Y Combinator as supporters.
General Fusion, located in Burnaby, B.C., is taking a different approach. Their piston-based reactor is designed to create energy bursts lasting thousandths of seconds, rather than a sustained plasma reaction. Heat recovered bursts would be used to generate electricity much like nuclear power plants, minus the long-term radioactive waste. General Fusion has attracted millions of dollars in funding, including investment from Bezos Expeditions and the Business Development Bank of Canada.
Time Horizon
Though commercially viable fusion is still a long way off, each new technological breakthrough brings us one step closer. With such a massive payoff for success, research will likely only increase as we get closer to bottling a star here on Earth.
A lot of the blogs I read ( Of Two Minds, The Automatic Earth, Our Finite World ) point out that we will be fortunate if we can keep our current level of ‘complexity’. That technological solutions maybe impossible because they add complexity to a world that can no longer afford it and we are more likely to have to curtail our energy consumption rather than expand it.
They make a compelling case based not on what is technically possible but the increasing cost of inputs relative to the output gained.
A final observation. Anyone notice how France always ends up being the site of these EU financed technology projects. The European Space Agency launch facility is in French Guyana. That super cyclotron on the French/ Swiss ( Francophone) border, Airbus HQ and assembly in France and now this ITER project…. in France. It is as if the whole EU project is a gigantic public works program, not for Europe, but France!
The short answer? No….because main stream star theory is wrong. Fusion seems to be always stuck at 20 years till we get it…..
Brian…..his last comments in the vid were 100%.
Anyway, this is way, way beyond my pay grade.
Having somewhat working knowledge of electrical engineering without the paper, the things he talks about from my perspective fit the way I understand about how electricity (the flow of electrons) works/behaves.
From a technical POV it makes way more sense than what is on the discovery channel.
Fusion power has been 15 years away since the 1950s. One of the main problems is that no reactor vessel can stand the neutron bombardment from a fusion reaction. Another is that controlling the fusion process costs more energy than is produced. Neither problem looks like being solved in this century.
With every cockamamie cornucopian energy scheme, there is never a discussion of the associated pollution, particularly waste heat, which we need like a hole in the head.
Read “The Limits to Growth”.
The Limits to Growth is so full of assumption and fallacy that it is not worth taking the time to read.
Virtually nothing in it is supported in the real world.
Molten salt thorium reactors. They must work because we never hear about them.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/10/india-has-almost-finished-the-worlds-first-advanced-thorium-nuclear-reactor/
Credit to the posting for citing three of the more than eight start-up companies working on fusion. The three mentioned in the article; Tri-Alpha, Helion, and General Fusion; have a decent chance of success. Others include the IEC polywell as well as Lockmart’s FRC. If we get fusion, it will no doubt come from one of these start-ups rather than the big government funded programs like ITER. Eve if we don;t get fusion, there are the multitude of Gen IV fission technologies (MSR, LFTR, etc.) that are being developed by both private start-ups as well as various governments around the world (India, and China being among them). Our fracking revolution is the bridge gap that will get us to the Gen IV fission and fusion future.
I think the energy future is wide open. I am barely old enough to remember all of the “limits to growth” hubub of the 1970’s. It was bogus and is bogus today. What I do notice about the promulgators of these “limits to growth” ideologies is they are really trying to promote what they believe to be ideal form of social organization. They don’t like the idea of individuals choosing for themselves whom they choose to associate with or not associate with. In other words, they are often hostile towards freedom of association in particular as well as individual liberty in general.
The 1972 MIT study “Limits to Growth” is looking eerily prescient. Certainly more accurate than recent IMF, Central Bank and other economic forecasts made just few years ago.
For example the 1972 study predicted global industrial production would peak around 2015 and, damned, it seems to have done just that. More ominously they predict global population will peak too and begin to decline by about 500 million per decade beginning in 2030. Remove sub saharan African population forecasts from the mix and that too seems spot on. I doubt Africa will reach the population numbers forecast for later this century either as that would require massive foreign assistance which will not be forthcoming in a low to zero growth developed world economy.
You are correct. However, these two predictions are DEMAND-side predictions (which none of the greenie luddite weenies ever talk about). Of course, peak industrial production is going to be based on peak people which, by nature, is a demand side thing. All of the greenie luddite types ever focus on are SUPPLY-side limitations, which we’re not anywhere close to on anything of matter. All of the supply-side predictions have turned out to be bogus.
Building it in France, huh? Are we sure thats a good idea? Won’t they be part of the caliphate in 15-20 more years? Of course once France and the UK are muslim controlled, they’ll already have a sizable stock of nuclear weapons anyways, so I guess all this could do is allow them to blow themselves up.
This seems to be one of those things thats ALWAYS 10-20 years away. It does slightly alarm me to see people playing with powerful forces they don’t fully understand, much like CERN.