After decades of failed attempts, scientists believe they are finally getting closer to achieving nuclear fusion on the scale needed to produce abundant clean energy. Several successful tests in recent years have made energy experts optimistic about the future of nuclear fusion, although some believe we are still a long way from achieving fusion on a commercial scale. Nevertheless, the achievements of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US and other laboratories around the world have encouraged companies to invest heavily in the sector.
Last August, American scientists achieved a net energy gain for the second time in a fusion reaction at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California. This represented a huge breakthrough in nuclear technology. The fusion reaction produced 3.15 megajoules of energy, which was more than the energy generated in the first successful attempt. Earlier this year, scientists at Britain’s JET laboratory achieved more energy production through a fusion process than ever before. The achievement came during the lab’s final experiment after four decades of fusion research.
While this is promising, scientists are quick to emphasize that it doesn’t mean we’re anywhere close to achieving nuclear fusion on a commercial scale. Dr. Aneeqa Khan, Research Fellow in Nuclear Fusion, University of Manchester, explained: ‘To fuse the atoms on Earth we need temperatures ten times hotter than the sun – around 100 million degrees Celsius, and we have require a high enough density. of the atoms and long enough.” The JET laboratory experiment produced 69 megajoules of energy in five seconds, equivalent to the energy for about four to five hot baths. This means that researchers are still a long way from achieving the results needed to develop fusion power plants. However, this achievement brings the industry one step closer to achieving its fusion goals.
Nuclear fission, the nuclear energy process used today, occurs when a neutron collides with a larger atom, forcing it to excite and split into two smaller atoms. Additional neutrons are also released, which can start a chain reaction. When each atom splits, a huge amount of energy is released. Uranium and plutonium are used to run nuclear reactors because they are easy to initiate and control. The energy released in these reactors is heated through fission of water into steam, which is used to spin a turbine to produce carbon-free electricity.
Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is the process that powers stars. This can be achieved by heating small particles and forcing them together into a heavier one, releasing energy. If scientists can figure out how to successfully scale this process to commercial levels, it could produce vast amounts of clean energy without carbon emissions. It would also provide a much more stable clean energy source than wind and solar energy.
While most scientists agree that we are still a long way from achieving fusion on the scale needed to power a nuclear power plant, this is not discouraging companies from investing heavily in the sector. In 2023, Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement with Helion Energy, which states that the energy company will supply the tech giant with fusion energy in about five years. Helion hopes to have a plant online by 2028, aimed at 50 MW of energy generation. Just 1 MW is enough to power about 1,000 American homes for a day. Helion expects its seventh-generation machine, Polaris, to come online next year to deliver electricity using pulsed high-powered magnet technologies to achieve fusion. It was the first private company to reach 100 million degrees Celsius and has high hopes for scaling up its technology.
David Kirtley, Helion’s founder and CEO, said: “Fifty megawatts is a big first step towards commercial-scale fusion, and the revenues go straight back into developing more power plants and getting fusion onto the grid, both in the United States and internationally as soon as possible.” Helion has raised $612 million in venture capital to date, with the potential of another $1.8 billion in funding if it meets promised deadlines. It has received another $8.97 million in federal grants.
OpenAI has also invested heavily in Helion, about $375 million so far. This month, Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, reportedly began discussions with Helion about purchasing fusion-generated electricity for its data centers. Altman stated earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “There is no way to achieve this without a breakthrough… We need fusion, or we need radically cheaper solar plus storage, or something at scale .”
While there is great enthusiasm around the potential to produce abundant clean energy through nuclear fusion, and this will undoubtedly require a lot of money, companies may go too far when they enter into power purchase agreements. There is a general consensus among scientists that we are unlikely to achieve nuclear fusion on a commercial scale before the second half of the century. Researchers have repeatedly predicted over the decades that fusion will be available within 20, 30 or 50 years, without really knowing how long this will take. Steven Cowley, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, explains: “Suppose we get a pilot plant that works by the end of the 2030s, although that will be a bit of a stretch.” Such a plant is unlikely to be a blueprint for commercialization, and so, he says, “I think another phase of about ten years is needed, from a pilot plant to the first commercial reactor.”
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
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