THE GOAL:
A few small nuclear reactors,
running on small pellets,
could power our entire planet.
There would be no risk
of a catastrophic meltdown,
and zero greenhouse gas
emissions.
But don't hold your breath
waiting for nuclear fusion
reactors.
THE BIG PICTURE:
The first useful prototype
nuclear fusion reactor
will take at least 15 years.
Maybe longer.
That's too bad,
because the world
is going to end
in 12 years!
Scientists have been working
on nuclear fusion technology
since the 1950s.
A practical nuclear fusion
power plant always seems
to be "decades away".
Scientists view nuclear fusion
as the Holy Grail for clean,
abundant and sustainable
power.
Nuclear fusion is based
on the same principle that
powers the stars,
including our own sun.
Meanwhile, we depend
on fossil fuels for 80%
of our energy needs.
The conditions
necessary for
nuclear fusion
to take place are an
extreme challenge.
Every fusion
experiment so far
has used more energy,
than it generated,
making it useless
for electricity generation.
Getting the initial fusion
reaction is not a problem.
Keeping it going is a problem.
And building fusion
nuclear reactors takes
extremely sophisticated
engineering.
PROTOTYPES:
The Saint-Paul-les-Durance,
France-based International
Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor, is known as ITER.
ITER will be the world’s
largest fusion facility,
used to develop
commercially viable
fusion reactors.
It's funded by six nations.
The US, Russia, China,
Japan, South Korea
and India.
ITER plans to build
the world’s largest
tokamak fusion device,
a donut-shaped cage
that will produce 500 ME
of thermal fusion energy.
The device will cost
about $24 billion.
The delivery date is 2035.
TIt will be the biggest
fusion machine ever built.
It will weigh 23,000 tonnes
and will be housed in
a building 60 meters high.
According to
Fusion for Energy,
the EU’s joint
undertaking for ITER,
it will be another
decade before
a full-scale
demonstration
power plant
will be built,
using lessons
learned from ITER,
which could be
connected to
the electric grid.
So now that
adds up to
25 years !
Commonwealth
Fusion Systems
is collaborating
with MIT,
to build its own
fusion reactor
in 15 years.
That fusion
experiment
is called Sparc.
Sparf is only 1/65th
the power of ITER,
generating about 100MW
of heat energy, in pulses
of about 10 seconds -
bursts big enough
to power a small city.
The team anticipates
that output power
will be more than
twice the power
needed to run
the reactor
( needed to heat the plasma ).
DETAILS:
Fusion forges
lighter elements
into heavier ones.
Nuclear fusion
produces net energy
only at extreme
temperatures -
hundreds of millions
of degrees celsius.
That’s hotter than
the sun’s core and
far too hot for any
known material
on earth to withstand.
To get around that problem,
scientists use powerful
magnetic fields to contain
the hot plasma and prevent it
from coming into contact
with the walls of the
nuclear reactor.
That uses a lot of power.
Scientists have now
developed a new
superconducting material .
It's a steel tape coated with
yttrium-barium-copper oxide,
or YBCO.
That allows building smaller
and more powerful magnets.
And lowers the input energy
required to get the fusion
reaction off the ground.
According to Fusion for Energy,
8 niobium-tin superconducting
magnets aka toroidal field coils
will be used to contain the
150 million degrees celsius
plasma.
The powerful magnets
will generate a powerful
magnetic field equal
to11.8 tesla, or a
million times stronger
than the earth's
magnetic field.
Europeans will manufacture
10 of the toroidal field coils
with Japan manufacturing
nine of them.