by The United States will work with other governments to accelerate efforts to make nuclear fusion a new carbon-free energy source, sent for the US climate. John Kerry he said Tuesday, the latest of many U.S. announcements in the past week aimed at combating climate change.
Nuclear fusion fuses two hydrogen atoms to produce one helium atom and a lot of energy, which could be used to power cars, heat and cool homes, and other things that currently typically run on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. That makes fusion a potentially important solution to climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Still, fusion is a long way off, while other clean technologies such as wind, solar and others are currently in use and could be scaled up.
“We are getting closer to a fusion-driven reality. And at the same time, yes, there are significant scientific and engineering challenges,” said Kerry, in Dubai for the U.N. climate talks. “Careful reflection and thoughtful policies will be critical to overcoming this.”
Researchers have been trying for decades to harness the reaction that powers the Sun and other stars, a difficult goal to achieve because it requires such high temperatures and pressures that it easily fades.
Kerry wants to accelerate that in hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, a benchmark set by the international community. He urged nations to come together to “harness the power of fundamental physics and human ingenuity in response to a crisis.” The strategy sets out five areas for international partnerships: research, supply chain and future market, regulation, labor issues and public participation. Kerry spoke at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum.
The United States and the United Kingdom announced a partnership in November to accelerate the global development of fusion energy, and the United States last year announced its own vision for the research needed during the decade. In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating on an experimental machine to harness fusion energy, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, to demonstrate the viability of fusion as a large-scale, carbon-free energy source. That project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. On Friday, Japan and Europe said they were launching the world’s largest fusion reactor.
Both China and Russia are partners in ITER, and China in particular is taking aggressive steps to promote fusion research and development, said Andrew Holland, executive director of the Fusion Industry Association.
“We are trying to build a global group to get there before the Chinese, so that the Chinese don’t dominate another new technology,” he said.
Before leaving for Dubai, Kerry put on a helmet and took a tour Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Devens, Massachusetts, a company racing to design, build and deploy fusion power plants.
Until now, all nuclear energy comes from nuclear fission reactors in which atoms are split, a process that produces both energy and radioactive waste. The global nuclear industry launched an initiative at COP28 for nations to commit to tripling this type of nuclear energy by 2050. More than 20 have already signed on, including the United States and the host of this year’s talks, the United Arab Emirates Joined.
Fusion does not produce the radioactive waste of nuclear fission. In a global race to turn it into a practical and possibly unlimited energy source, more than $6 billion has been invested to date, according to the Fusion Industry Association. There are currently more than 40 fusion companies around the world and more than 80% of the investment is made in the United States. Thirteen of the companies emerged in just the last year and a half.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised the most, more than $2 billion, according to the association.
Like the 35-nation effort, the Commonwealth is trying to create a merger within what is called a tokamak. The donut-shaped machine uses powerful magnets to confine and insulate a plasma so that it is hot enough for the fusion reaction to occur and stay hot longer.
A year ago, in a breakthrough using different technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, scientists were for the first time able to engineer a reaction that produced more energy than was used to turn it on, called net energy gain. Their process uses lasers.
Physicists around the world see donut-shaped machines as the most promising type of magnetic fusion device.
Tokamaks have been increasing in size to achieve better performance. Commonwealth Fusion was founded in 2018 by researchers and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Fusion and Plasma Science. Using advances in superconducting magnet technology combined with the science of their own compact tokamak, the MIT group set out to build a high-temperature tolerant magnet that could generate really strong magnetic fields, using little electricity.
Their hope is to build a smaller, less expensive unit more quickly, to make fusion commercially viable for the first time, said Professor Dennis Whyte, a Commonwealth co-founder who heads the Center for Plasma Science and Fusion.
“If fusion becomes economically competitive, we will have solved energy for humanity forever, forever. It’s like, of course you have to go after that,” he said in an interview. “The compulsion that arises from both climate change and energy security means that it seems like this is the right time to make the big push to get there “.
The company and the university collaborate closely. In 2021, they activated their superconducting electromagnet and demonstrated an unprecedented magnetic field, making it the most powerful fusion magnet of its kind. Whyte said he knew then that the merger had changed forever.
But despite the hype, reliable and cheap nuclear fusion energy remains a pipe dream, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. Fusion is much less likely to come to market in a timeframe that will allow it to help prevent the worst effects of climate change, he said. Lyman said the huge price tag could also deprive more promising alternatives, such as renewable energy, of the resources they need to thrive.
However, 19 fusion companies believe they will deliver power to the grid before 2035, the Fusion Industry Association said in July.
Commonwealth is designing its first power station, which it calls “ARC”, to connect to the grid in the early 2030s.
ARC is intended to produce approximately 460 megawatts of electricity. About 60 of them would be used to run the plant, with a net output of about 400 megawatts, enough to power tens of thousands of homes. It is expected to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, according to the company, and will fit into a space the size of a basketball court.
Before that, Commonwealth says it will build and test a prototype tokamak it calls SPARC, hoping to activate it in late 2025 or early 2026.
CEO Bob Mumgaard said he believes clean energy from fusion can decarbonize heavy industries that are big emitters of greenhouse gases.
“That’s our future game, it’s the really difficult things, the ones that take you to zero,” he said in an interview.
Along the walls of Commonwealth is a hip-high pattern of white dots, one for each of the 10,000 fusion power plants they believe the world will need by 2050. Mumgaard said it is a daily reminder of that the world uses a lot of energy, most of it. of fossil fuels, and that has to change.
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