POWER August 2018 - 45

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY
Fusion Power: Watching, Waiting,
as Research Continues
Cheap and abundant electric power from nuclear fusion-power " too cheap to
meter " -has been a dream for more than a half-century. But as time passes,
practical fusion appears to be moving further into the future, prompting
some skeptics to proclaim it the " forever fuel. "
Kennedy Maize
F
or more than 60 years producing electric
power from nuclear fusion-smashing
hydrogen atoms together with enormous
force to form helium atoms and release
vast amounts of energy as a low-cost and
endless fuel supply-has been a holy grail of
energy gurus. Governments worldwide have
spent hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps
more than a trillion, in pursuit of that glittering,
elusive goal.
All that effort and all those resources
have so far produced few practical results
and nothing approaching a commercial generating
technology. When the U.S. government
first announced a coordinated fusion
research and development (R&D) program
at the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
in the 1950s, the AEC said commercial fusion
energy was 25 years in the future. In a
1969 speech, then-AEC Chairman Glenn
Seaborg said that " with the successful use of
controlled fusion, man will have a virtually
unlimited energy resource at hand. Even at a
power consumption rate many times that of
today, he will have an energy reserve that will
last for millions of years. "
Today, more than six decades after the
AEC's fusion R&D program began, optimistic
projections suggest fusion energy will be
practical no sooner than 2050. In 2006, New
Scientist magazine had an even more pessimistic
assessment, saying in an editorial that
" if commercial fusion is viable, it may well
be a century away. "
The basic physics of fusion are relatively
simple. Hydrogen atoms pressed together under
enormous pressure and temperature fuse,
producing helium atoms and a lot of excess
energy in the form of heat. That's how the
sun works and gives life to our planet. It's
how thermonuclear H-bombs, the most terrifying
of weapons, work.
But turning that exploding technology
into commercial, peaceful electric-generating
machines is problematic. Legendary
nuclear scientist Edward Teller, the father
August 2018 | POWER
of the H-bomb, told a symposium in 1962,
" It is easy to blow up something; it is much
more difficult to make it react at a slow and
controllable rate. "
The engineering is frighteningly gnarly.
What happens in the sun takes place at an
enormous scale, where confining the forces
at work is not an issue. What happens in a
hydrogen bomb is an instantaneous energy
release. Taking those forces and trying to
manage them at a vastly smaller scale to
continuously produce electricity is a mindboggling
challenge.
Physicists Garry McCracken and Peter
Stott, in their 2005 book Fusion: The Energy
of the Universe, describe the engineering
challenge of fusion energy. They write that
" to release fusion energy, the fuel has to be
heated to unbelievably high temperatures in
the region of hundreds of millions of degrees
Celsius-hotter in fact than the Sun. The obvious
problem is how to contain such very hot
fuel-clearly there are no material containers
that will withstand such temperatures. "
National and international research programs
aimed at commercial electric production
from fusing hydrogen into helium
continue. R&D managers frequently assert
major breakthroughs that appear to be aimed
at continuing government funding, often appearing
as governments are setting budgets
for future work. Those alleged breakthroughs
often become dead ends as the work proceeds.
Some recent headlines show the fusion conundrum
and confusion:
■ " Scientists Create New Method of Fusion
Energy, Without the Old Complications "
(BigThink.com, December 18, 2017)
■ " Nuclear fusion company says it will
make carbon-free energy a reality " (Mashable.com,
December 19, 2017)
■ " Channeling helium: Researchers take
next step toward fusion energy " (Texas
A&M University, November 10, 2017)
■ " World's Largest Laser Could Solve Our
www.powermag.com
Energy Problems " (Forbes, October 29,
2017)
■ " MIT Achieves Breakthrough in Nuclear
Fusion " (Popular Mechanics, August 28,
2017)
■ " Fusion energy pushed back beyond
2050 " (BBC News, July 11, 2017)
The hyped fusion advances in the headlines
all appeared as Congress was considering
funding the Department of Energy's (DOE's)
fusion R&D program. In the past, the announcements
of progress in fusion research
appeared as congressional appropriations
committees were considering DOE funding
for a new fiscal year. In recent years as gridlock
gripped Congress, the regular order of
appropriations has broken down. " Kick the
can down the road " budgeting has become
the order of the day. Congress has approved
a series of short-term funding bills based on
continuing current spending until legislators
can come to grips with funding details.
For energy R&D, including fusion spending,
that has meant a focus on lobbying to
prevent cuts in funding. The Trump administration
in May proposed cutting DOE fusion
spending by 18.4%, to $310 million. But the
Trump budget was dead on arrival and Congress,
through a series of stop-gap " continuing
resolutions, " has kept overall spending at
fiscal year 2017 levels.
Magnets Versus Lasers
Two approaches to containing the forces of
the fusion reaction have dominated global
R&D over the years: using magnetic fields
to contain the blazing plasmas needed to get
hydrogen atoms to fuse, and using lasers to
concentrate and contain the plasmas. Billions
have been spent on each large-scale approach.
Neither appears to be the answer to
fusion's engineering challenges.
The magnetic confinement approach
has become the conventional method to attack
the problems of fusion energy. The So45
http://www.BigThink.com http://www.able.com http://www.powermag.com
POWER August 2018

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