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The Tortuous Way to Nuclear Fusion

March 24, 2022

The Tortuous Way to Nuclear Fusion

Newspapers make you think that nuclear fusion for electricity production is within reach and that, unlike fission, it is cheaper, cleaner, and safer. Okay, it’s not online yet, it is argued, but it’s up to us how fast it will supply useful energy. Things appear more complicated than that as soon as we take a look at the extraordinary variety of methods adopted by all the initiatives proposed.

Some use fuel from nuclear warheads, such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, of which ENI is a shareholder. Others use the boron-proton reaction, such as the TAE, financed by ENEL, Tokamak Energy promotes magnetic confinement, and First Light Fusion of Oxford has been inspired by the “claw” of Alpheus heterochaelis, the gun shrimp claw. There are about thirty companies in this market and just as many, very different, methods. For the most part, these methods have been already studied, and discarded, by the academic community, and yet the industry has not decided which path to follow. This confusion indicates how distant the goal is. Let’s revisit the story of fusion and the origin of this explosion of promises.

The inspiration for nuclear fusion came from looking at the sky, it originated with the mystery of the energy that powers the stars. At first they thought of gravity, a non-trivial idea for a body as large as the Sun. Jupiter, for example, a gaseous planet, has a surface temperature twice that of the Earth, powered by gravity while the planet shrinks of a few millimeters per year. Gravity was also Lord Kelvin’s hypothesis for the Sun’s power during a famous meeting of the Royal Society on January 21, 1887. The surface temperature of the Sun made him deduce that our star had been shining for about twelve million years, much longer than the Bible states.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

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Nuclear Fusion: is it still worth investing on it in an age of cheap renewable energy? 

April 30, 2018

Nuclear Fusion: is it still worth investing on it in an age of cheap renewable energy? 

ITER TOKAMAK, looking carefully, at the bottom right circled in red, a human in a yellow jacket. The probable size of a magnetic confinement fusion reactor is huge and it’s at the core of most of its problems.

My view on nuclear fusion, in a nutshell

A review by Giuseppe Cima of the situation with nuclear fusion. The matter is complex, but Cima identifies the crucial point: even assuming that nuclear fusion were to work as expected, it would be more expensive than the presently available renewable technologies. Consider also that it will take at least half a century before we can have fusion reactors able to produce commercially available energy (maybe). How much better and cheaper will renewables be by that time? Considering that fusion is not a “clean” technology, as sometimes claimed, it doesn’t seem to have any realistic chance to be useful for something, now or in the future. So, why are we still spending money and resources on this technology? One more example of the human blind faith in technology and its miracles (U.B.)

Nowadays few businesses would invest in conventional nuclear power stations. In the US, subsidies of 100% or more fail to attract private investments for a nuclear fission power station, the classic form of nuclear energy. So, the perspectives for a revival of nuclear are not rosy.

But there exists another form of nuclear energy, thermonuclear fusion, the one that powers the stars. Fusion, the sticking together of light nuclei such as hydrogen, is a nuclear reaction distinct from fission, where heavy atoms, such as uranium, break apart. Fusion energy research has been pursued since the WWII years in national labs and universities all over the world. Despite all efforts, though, so far it has not provided a clear indication of being feasible. What are the current perspectives of this form of energy?

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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