FUSION, the Nuclear Energy we all need and should want.

There is a kind of nuclear energy that is almost too good to be true.  It's called fusion, and it will change the world.  It will provide abundant, safe and clean energy.  But until recently, fusion was too difficult to be used to generate electricity.  

Fusion and fission are the two main types of nuclear energy, but everything we have seen so far in energy generation is fission.  Unfortunately fission has a bad reputation because of the events at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.   

Fission, what our current reactors use, is where we take very heavy elements like uranium and break them apart into smaller, but still very heavy, elements like strontium and cesium.  The act of splitting those atoms releases a massive amount of energy, nuclear binding energy, and no greenhouse gases.  Zero.  But fission energy has down sides. 

• There can be accidents that can be very dangerous if the machines fail. 
• There are byproducts that require great care to store and which stay radioactive for a very long time. 
• Some of the byproducts can be used to make terrible weapons.
• The fuel for these reactors is not plentiful.  Nonetheless, fission has a bad rap. 

Nonetheless, our fission reactors are the best energy source available.

• Today's reactors (fission) are safer than ever. 
• Today's fission reactors are very reliable.
• Today's fission reactors are the ONLY energy source available 24/7/365 that creates no greenhouse gases.  

Fusion, on the other hand, does not create long-term radioactive waste.  Fusion is far safer, because if the machine breaks, the nuclear reaction just stops and poses no widespread melt-down threat.  Fusion produces no byproducts that can be easily made into nuclear weapons.  And best of all, the fuel for nuclear fusion energy is sea water and lithium, both abundant, and like fission, fusion creates NO GREENHOUSE GASES.  

So why aren't there fusion power generators already? To answer this, you need to understand the difference between fission and fusion. 

Fusion is where lighter elements are crushed together to create larger elements.  An example is when two atoms of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, are combined to create a helium atom, AND in the process release a massive amount of energy.  This is the energy we see in the light and warmth from our Sun.  If you're a big solar-energy fan, thank fusion.  So, fusion happens all the time, all over the universe, in the center of every star, where the temperatures and pressures are enough to crash atoms together that normally repel each other.  All the elements from the helium in a child's balloon up to the iron in our cars were formed by fusion in stars.  For the record, heavier elements (e.g. the gold in your jewelry) were made by fusion in even more extreme conditions when stars collide or explode.

Fusion is common in space, but can we create such extreme conditions in machines on Earth?  The answer is a resounding YES.  We do it all the time at science facilities such as the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy lab dedicated to studying fusion.  And there are many other places in America and overseas where fusion reactions are created and studied in laboratory settings.  But they all have the same problem; the machines can not run for more than a minute or two, and the machines require more energy input than they produce, which defeats the purpose.   All this is about to change.

The author, Kurt Heckman at ITER

Experimental fusion devices have been successfully creating fusion reactions for decades, and the biggest effort has been an international effort called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) that is under final assembly in the south of France.  ITER is a joint effort of America, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India and European Union.  Like any massive project with lots of players, ITER is big, expensive, over budget, over engineered, and behind schedule, but ITER will work.  ITER should be the first laboratory machine that contains a fusion reaction that meets the two major goals: a long running cycle and much more energy out than in.  

But something else is brewing that is will likely steal ITER's thunder.  Instead of success at a government lab, several companies, using cutting edge technology, will likely get to commercially viable fusion first.  Three appear to be in the lead: TAE, General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.  

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is based near Boston, Massachusetts and works in collaboration with MIT.  They appear to be leading the pack and have announced that they will put fusion generated electricity on the grid in the early 2030s with their new plant in Virginia.  They are using very recent discoveries in magnets.  While that might sound simple, it's anything but.  Their magnets are extremely strong, require low input energy, and work at relatively high temperatures.  This is commonly known as high-temperature super conductors.  This employment of new magnet technology promises to be the first sprinter across the commercial fusion finish line.  Their next generation machine will use their magnets in a way that makes containment of fusion reaction possible for very long periods of time, without breaking the machine, and producing far more energy than consumed.  

TAE is based in southern California, and they made some of the first serious inroads in convincing the investor community that commercially viable fusion was closer than many thought.  That is really important.  Governments should fund science when the return on investment is over the horizon, but when the broader market moves in, things really change.  TAE's fusion devices use state of the art technology including artificial intelligence.  To contain fusion reactions within a magnetic field for a prolonged period of time has been a major challenge.  To reach longer reactions, TAE does several runs a day with a broad array of controls and sensors.  Each operation is meticulously measured, and the data is used in AI to predict better control configurations for future fusion shots.  This iterative process of using AI to tune the system is groundbreaking.  TAE also planned to go past what is commonly considered the first step in fusion, the combining of different types (isotopes) of hydrogen, to fusing boron and protons.  This is called p-B11 in the fusion community.  It's even harder to do requiring higher temperatures, BUT it's a superior reaction that creates less radiation in the form of lethal neutrons. 

General Fusion, based out of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, comes at the problem entirely differently.  They use a very-high performance compression system that makes use of synchronized drivers, not unlike pistons, which surround a central chamber to drive/crush the fuel into conditions that cause fusion.   Inside the chamber is a swirling vortex of liquid metal used to contain the fusion fuel and reaction.  As the chamber is compressed, the fuel briefly heats to more than 100 million degrees Celsius, causing fusion to occur which releases massive amounts of energy in the form of heat that a commercial plant could extract to produce electricity. 

It is this writer's opinion that any of these three companies might get to commercially viable fusion reactors that put clean electricity on the grid in the next two decades, well ahead of the big government labs.  But it is also fair to say, that none of these companies would be in this position if the government had not kept fusion research going for decades.  They all build on the science paid for by taxpayer dollars at places like DOE's Fusion Energy Science and more recently, ARPA-E.

When commercially viable fusion happens, the world will change.  Safe and clean fusion reactors will generate nearly unlimited amounts of electricity all over the world, and the fuel will be seawater.  

Kurt Heckman (right) at DOE's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory with Lab Director, Dr. Sir Steven Cowley (left).

Imagine a world where oil is just used as a lubricant, and coal is only used by blacksmiths at artisan shows.  It's a world where countries aren't worried about the supply of energy they need, where factories, ships, trucks, cars and even our homes don't burn fossil fuels and don't put smoke into the air, and where greenhouse gases are a thing of the past.  

Nuclear fusion will deliver on those dreams, and it's sooner than you'd think.

Author: Kurt Heckman

Kurt Heckman was recently a Senior Advisor in the Department of Energy's Office of Science.  He then became the Director of Secretarial Boards and Councils reporting directly to the Secretary of Energy.  During his tenure at the DOE, Mr. Heckman focused on the science mission at DOE and the ways that groundbreaking science will positively affect mankind.  Top on that list is nuclear fusion.

Kurt Heckman is a career aerospace engineer and entrepreneur.  He is currently the President of vCalc.