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Page added on December 11, 2014
Cheap, clean, fusion power one step closer to reality
Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a new type of fusion reactor that could generate eco-friendly power for less money than fossil fuels.
This is a Dynomak, a fusion reactor its makers say could one day efficiently produce massive amounts of clean energy at a fraction of the cost of any other reactor currently being developed. Fusion is how stars produce energy.
It occurs when the nuclei of light atoms, such as hydrogen, are fused together under extreme pressure and heat. Thomas Jarboe, a professor of physics, says fusion power is the holy grail of energy sources, which is why he’s spent the past four decades attempting to harness it.
“It’s essentially an infinite source of energy. It is clean energy. It doesn’t have any footprint on the Earth, no footprint, no radioactive waste, no greenhouse gases. It’s basically the ideal energy source.”
While fusion may someday provide an infinite source of energy, researchers still need to overcome plenty of hurdles to get there.
For a start, building reactors that basically mimic and sustain the extreme forces that take place in the sun is very expensive.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, is the most ambitious fusion reactor project currently underway.
The massive structure, being built in France, is a Tokamak reactor design.. which relies on superconducting coils to create a magnetic field to hold hot plasma in place for fusion to occur. Jarboe and researcher Derek Sutherland’s Dynomak design creates a magnetic field by driving electrical currents directly into the plasma.
“That allows the reactor to be a lot cheaper because there are less walls to deal with and less coils to shield,” said Jarboe.
“What we have discovered here in a way to sustain the current much much more efficiently, orders of magnitude more efficiently than conventional current drive methods they use on tokamaks.”
This small model has proven that their concept works. The next step is to scale it up so they can achieve the temperatures needed to start and sustain a fusion reaction.
If successful, Sutherland says this design could rival oil and gas in affordability, although admits there’s much work still to do. But he says progress being made on his reactor and others will ensure that fusion power becomes a reality within our lifetime.
10 Comments on "Cheap, clean, fusion power one step closer to reality"
J-Gav on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 12:08 pm
Yee-ha! It’s “almost here” … again.
Speculawyer on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 1:00 pm
Let’s assume they are close to something real. I still worry about fusion energy.
Initially, it will be GREAT. We could build lots of fusion plants and generate electricity emission-free and with less radioactive waste than fission. We could transition to electric cars and with fusion electricity and electric cars we would massively slash greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the long term . . . we would do what we always do when given a great gift . . . we would abuse it. We would grow our population until the next crisis occurs. I don’t know what it will be . . . lack of farmland, peak phosphorous, over-fishing the oceans, etc. :-/ We need to learn to limit ourselves.
bobinget on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 1:55 pm
Fusion, except for sunlight, is in the future and always will be.
jjhman on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 2:49 pm
Breakthroughs happen but vary rarely. I suppose it is possible that a very small group of researchers either at UoW or Lockheed can make some kind of breakthrough.
But people from all of the major industrial societies in the world have been working on this problem for 50 years. It would certainly be a black eye for the very concept of “Big Science” if a poorly funded, independent group did in 5 or 10 years what big science had botched continuously for over 50 years.
Davy on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 3:01 pm
Fusion is expensive example of fantasy splattered on the windshield of reality.
Poordogabone on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 4:54 pm
Fusion energy would be an abomination as we would use it to produce more nasty chemicals, and extract the trillions of barrels of oil that is currently uneconomical to get. Don’t fool yourself, the military machine needs oil, so does planes, trucks, earth moving equipment. We would definitely fry the planet. Since when does humanity has been wise at using a surplus of anything especially energy?
Makati1 on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 6:11 pm
Sorry! No time for a visit to Fantasy Island today.
Norm on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 8:43 pm
Welfare bums. Good for economy of Seattle. Keep Starbucks full of fusion grad students drinking $5 coffee.
GregT on Thu, 11th Dec 2014 8:56 pm
We did not stop burning wood when we found coal. We did not stop burning coal when we found oil. We did not stop burning oil when we found electricity, and we won’t stop burning any of them if we find fusion.
The first thing that we need to do before we find anything else, is to reduce consumption. If we did find fusion today, we would only use it to supplement other forms of energy, not replace them, to continue on with BAU and exponential growth. The same dead end.
joe on Thu, 26th Mar 2015 1:37 pm
A visit to the iteration Web site sets out a basic plan that will see fusion energy viable at an industrial scale sometime near the end of this century. Obviously we can’t wait that long. What we see with our eyes, the Hubbert curve proving that old adage of thermodynamics, that which goes up, must come down. Yemen, going dry, is now splitting. USA pulled out, as there is not enough oil to defend. Iraq will be the next Saudi, but a shia one, so the US needs a dog in that hunt. Saudi can force a price war on the US as it has a massive store of petro-dollars to spend, the aim is to force out tight oil now to maximise the last of its own easy-oil. The next ten years will see the bumpy plateau of Saudi oil as it tries to control the market, but most people won’t see it as by then, higher price tight oil and persian oil (ie iraqi and iranian) smooths out the plateau to around 2030/40 by then China will be furiously digging into its own shale and fraking like crazy. Global economic growth should stagnate, this is the greatest danger as the next 2 generations face low expectations. Then the next energy revolution should happen as humans begin to live with global warming and switch to renewable and energies like fusion which, with regulation, can solve many problems. Regions like the middle east will decline allot, but so will the US as the dollar will become irrelevant in the new energy market and merchantilism replaces American capitalism. Nations will in fact become more insular, as air travel will become a memory without developing new non oil engines, multiculturalism will cause tensions in the west as contact with former homelands will be mostly via the Internet. Cars too will be irrelevent so too will what we call war today, without motorised armies nations will fight via emp weapons and ironically the age of the ship will return.