I know the joke “It is always 50 years away”. I just was wondering if the body of work since 90s which is what the popular level of scientific knowledge is at, including mine – did that notion change? Is fusion technically “all good in paper” and it is an issue of reaching right material technology to harness it, or is it a more complicated complication?
P.S. I know Fusion is real, because stars. I am asking if it is possible on paper in the form factor of a generator.
In: Engineering
In order for “fusion power” to exist, we need to produce more energy from the reaction than the energy cost of sustaining it. The current record is around 70% (0.7) which is still less than break even. We’ll need to get to around 5-10x break even to generate electricity on a practical scale. The ITER reactor currently being built is the most funded fusion project. It aims to reach 10x break even for 5-10 mins at a time. ITER won’t produce electricity because it doesn’t have a turbine – the heat generated will just be discarded. But if it succeeds, we’ll be able to build another reactor (DEMO) which will be even more effective. The roadmap includes a third reactor, PROTO, which will serve as an actual power plant, with turbines and other equipment to produce electricity.
There’s still a *lot* that needs to be done before we see commercial fusion power plants.
– Reach 10x break-even on energy out/energy in
– Sustain the reaction for long enough at a time to be practical. The expectation is for reactors to run continuously instead of mere seconds at a time.
– Effectively breed tritium in sufficient quantities, as this is required to fuel the reactors. The fusion reactors themselves are being designed to breed their own tritium.
– Develop new materials that can survive facing the inside of the reactor chamber for long enough to be practical
– Develop methods to perform remote maintenance/material replacement on the highly irradiated reactor chamber
These barriers are pretty significant, but it’s all at least theoretically possible. Hopefully it’ll also be economically feasible to run them commercially. Fusion does have to compete with other low carbon methods of generation e.g. solar+wind+energy storage.
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