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Page added on September 9, 2015
‘Renegade’ physicists say they’re on fast track to nuclear fusion
Doughnut-shaped and cored like an apple, could a pint-sized nuclear reactor recreate the sun on Earth?
A start-up in southeast England is betting on it. Tokamak Energy (TE), a privately funded venture 55 miles west of London, says it is pursuing “a faster way to fusion”.
The 16-strong team aims to convert the energy that fuels stars into electricity within ten years.
That would be a colossal feat of physics and engineering, and something that has eluded scientists since the 1950s.
The timeframe to reach what it calls a “Wright Brothers moment” is bullish.
In an industry scarred by rash proclamations of fusion’s arrival, the small spin-off of the nearby world leading Culham Laboratory is going against the grain.
Across the channel, government consensus and budgets back a £13 billion joint research effort in southern France seeking to produce fusion at power-plant scale.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or Iter, aims to start operations in the mid-2020s, and achieve fusion electricity by 2050 at the latest.
Yet so far it resembles vast quantities of concrete poured into the ground, with mounting setbacks pushing back the date the 35-nation endeavour starts mixing the fuel.
Enduring appeal
Fusion being just a generation away is a habitual refrain, observers scoff.
But glacial progress could stymie the race for fusion, as policymakers lose interest and divert research funds, warns TE chief executive, David Kingham.
“We’re now sure it’s possible to achieve fusion energy gain that’s much smaller than people conventionally think,” Kingham tells RTCC from the venture’s aircraft-style hangar H.Q. in an Oxfordshire science park.
Nuclear fusion’s appeal is enduring for a reason. It could produce near-limitless energy from abundant sources. Radioactive waste is minimal, there’s no risk of proliferation, and it produces zero greenhouse gas emissions.
As global temperatures continue their unrelenting climb, it could account for all our energy needs and do away with fossil fuels. Or that’s how the most Panglossian viewing goes.
Though there’s a hitch. Fusion is outstandingly complex. After decades of forward steps, the endeavour is more or less stuck in a rut, Kingham says.
The pursuit saw gains from the 1950s onwards, catalysed by the splitting of the atom, breaking records in 1997 when a British cooperative produced fusion energy.
The Joint European Torus (JET) at Culham generated 16 megawatts or 65% of the energy put in. The goal is to get net energy gain.
To achieve fusion, charged particles are heated up to over a million degrees and collided when they would usually stay apart.
The fuel is a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotypes of hydrogen. The first is found in seawater, while tritium can be made from lithium inside the reactor.
That creates a fast-moving soup called plasma. This needs to be confined or trapped, so the fuel can be kept hot and long enough for fusion to occur.
That’s the theory, though different methods exist, ranging from using lasers to magnets to confine the plasma.
Jet engines
TE have a five-step plan to get to their goal. Up to £300 million is required, and they have drummed up £10 million in investments, grants and tax breaks, so far to work early versions.
The aim is to roll them off the production line like jet engines. Kingham calculates 400-700 of the machines with 100 megawatt capacity could power the UK’s energy needs.
Their device is a tweaked spherical tokamak, a Russian acronym that stands for “toroidal chamber magnetic coils”. The plasma is heated using microwaves and has to be stabilised by controlling the shape of the magnetic fields.
Machines will use stronger ‘superconductor’ magnets and progress to liquid nitrogen to eventually helium gas to cool it down. But it’s one-twentieth of Iter’s size.
“The balance for us is being realistic about the risks. You can’t pretend there aren’t in both technological development and our ability to raise further investment.
“But the value of the goal is sufficiently high that people can justify taking a bold view,” he adds.
TE’s logic believes large amounts of energy can be saved by cooling the reactors less. That boosts chances of scoring finance, and scaling up the model.
Mind boggling
This disruptive technology and its optimistic timelines has ruffled feathers.
“I guess you could call us renegades, yes,” Kingham submits.
At a meeting sizing up fusion’s potential in July in the House of Lords, the country’s scrutinising upper chamber, Kingham and Steve Cowley, the head of the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority traded barbs.
TE’s plan “boggles the mind,” Cowley said according to a transcript, fearing dents to the UK’s scientific credibility given its forecasts.
“[C]laims to investors of being able to get to fusion by 2018 drove us to say, “We need to have you at arm’s length,” charged Cowley, also director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.
Cowley argued the process of getting nuclear licensing would draw the process out at least ten or fifteen years after getting fusion electricity. He sees 2040 as more realistic.
With the bulk of £171 million being invested through state funding Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, going to Culham, that reputation is key.
“We think we have the basic ingredients that give us a really good shot at trying to make rapid progress,” Kingham protested.
The venture says it is backed by new scientific evidence, and was given a fillip in August when the World Economic Forum named it a technological pioneer. Spotify and Dropbox have been past winners.
Howard Wilson, a fusion expert at York University, said he had seen nothing that suggested TE could “get ahead of the pack”.
Iter was the path to follow, with the knowledge arising from its construction giving the best chance to claim fusion. It aims to produce 500 megawatts of power from 50MW of input.
Jonathan Menard, who directs the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade at Princeton University, a rival project, welcomed TE’s “different research line”, given Iter’s protracted problems.
But he insisted milestones were more relevant than timeframes. “The field has been burned by promises about making timescales, we’re reluctant to do that.”
And he urged patience in the race to achieve “one of the most scientifically challenging things humankind has ever done.” The weakness of solar and wind to shore up baseload power, which fusion could address, meant it deserved interest.
Growing realisation that the planet needs to halt emissions, with the G7 bloc of advanced economies calling for “decarbonisation of the global economy” by 2100, means interest will remain.
Just look to China, Menard says, where state institutions are ramping up projects and PhD students.
In spite of its complex challenges, Kingham is defiant in his outfit’s long-shot bet.
“There’s something fascinating about plasma and how you control these hot wriggly objects that aren’t like solids, liquids, or gases.
“It has to be something about producing the sun on earth.”
26 Comments on "‘Renegade’ physicists say they’re on fast track to nuclear fusion"
Davy on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 7:57 am
More myths of the mind individual and collective. Even if this were a technology with widespread applications the return generated from its application would undoubtable come too little too late. In other worlds we are at a critical point of scale in regards to our survival. This scale is related to the ability of our global system to generate productive economic effort that is enough in excess of all the other requirements to cover such investments. We have a limited time per a destabilized climate then a multiyear climate mitigation effort. The build out of fusion will be a multiyear effort and very dirty with waste stream and carbon. These scale issues do not add up. There are 100 other scale issues this comment has no time to discuss.
In a few simple words we do not have the economic pocket book or the time to take on such undertakings. This is in the context of this being an actual valid energy breakthrough which I doubt. Instead we should be husbanding every available vital resources for the descent. Instead we will piss away any hope of having the resources to take care of billions of desperate people for pie-in-the sky tech fantasy. Add that to unneeded sports stadiums and BAU infrastructure. It will not be complex society we will be worried about soon. It will be food.
steve on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 9:18 am
This is a good way for scientist to pretend and not have to get a real job. nice if you can make it work….in science it is all about hype and funding…
penury on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 10:06 am
“In a few simple words we do not have the economic pocket book or the time to take on such undertakings.” Davy I think you covered the points completely.
ohanian on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 10:47 am
And next they will tell you that they have FOUND THE CURE TO CANCER.
tangible on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 11:05 am
The Club of Rome used to postulate the demise of mankind as oil and food resources were exhausted by population growth. Limit of 4 Billion people.
Yet somehow we’re still here.
Climate science depends on Govt funding to exist, and found a nirvana in Global Warming. When limited proof was found, it became Climate Change.
Research into fusion has been cut over the last 25 years, in favor of big science at CERN and now ITER. Those big constituents have crowded out many valid lines of inquiry.
It is high time to revisit fusion.
Rattus on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 11:32 am
@tangible
It’s true that we are still here. It’s also true that we are deeply in overshoot..
As for the climate, let’s say it one more time: Global warming is what it says: Globally, the earth is warming up. Climate change is how this warming is affecting the climate in different parts of the world. They’ve always been two different things and there is an incredible amount of proof to support both.
You are either incredibly uninformed or you’re simply not trying hard enough.
Dubya on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 1:31 pm
Thank you, tangible.
The Club of Rome prediction is still precisely on track, except that the human population is much higher than expected; which is probably not a good thing.
Anybody else wish to post an opinion completely at odds with reality?
Excellent.
Now let’s get back to saving the world, or whatever the hell we are doing here.
green_achers on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 1:43 pm
Everyone wants to be called a “renegade.” I never understood that. The word means “liar.”
Lawfish1964 on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 2:52 pm
Only ten years away. Sweet!
apneaman on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 3:06 pm
What would the rapicious apes do with all that energy? Suck up the CO2, attempt to refreeze the Arctic, reforest, detoxify, de acidify the oceans, replenish topsoil, or strip mine the planet to make more devices and better weapons? It’s too late kids. No amount of cheap clean energy can save us from the forces we have unleashed. Lag time and inertia. That’s what we are waiting for. Can’t be stopped nor survived by soft naked apes.
Why are dinosaurs extinct? You asked Google – here’s the answer
“Just prior to the asteroid impact, an area in prehistoric India called the Deccan Traps started pouring out an immense volume of molten rock. These eruptions spewed tons of greenhouse gases into the air, to which the products of the impact only added. Dust from the initial impact and soot from wildfires turned the sky black and blotted out the sun. The sky remained dark for years, depriving vegetation of sunlight. As the plants withered, so did the herbivores, and, in time, the carnivorous dinosaurs followed. And even though dinosaurs are the most famous victims of the catastrophe, they were not the only ones. The disaster also marked oblivion for various other forms of life, from coil-shelled cephalopods called ammonites and the giant marine reptiles that fed on them in the seas, to the leathery-winged pterosaurs that soared through the air.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/09/dinosaur-extinction-reasons-jurassic-asteroid
tahoe1780 on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 4:06 pm
@apnea – “It aims to produce 500 megawatts of power from 50MW of input.” EROEI of 10 (forgetting energy to build)? Not enough to run the existing economy, let alone mitigate anything.
hosj on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 4:12 pm
I’m not quite as dismissive as many in this forum. There have been serious breakthroughs in the past right when they are needed. However, we’d need to see this being working and deployed by 2020 for this to prevent collapse.
GregT on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 4:53 pm
hosj,
More human induced energy production is not going to stop the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystems, quite the opposite, it would only help to accelerate collapse.
I find it strange how so many people are concerned about saving our economies, when it is our economies that are destroying our only planet. We will survive as a species without modern industrial society, but we will not survive without biodiversity, clean water, and oxygen.
hosj on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 7:12 pm
Using nuclear fusion instead of fossil fuels would not have dealt this sort of damage. At this point though, I agree. It is too late to prevent major damage. We really needed fusion before 2000 ideally.
The chart of terrestrial vertabrate biomass is chilling. Humans really have dominated the planet to an absurd degree.
I’m not quite sold on a die-off, at least in developed countries, but I do see a painful power-downs in the near future. Climate change, of course, is the wildcard.
GregT on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 7:49 pm
hosj,
IMO we really needed ‘something’ before the 70s. We needed to wake up and pay attention to the scientific community. We didn’t, we still aren’t, and we are going to pay the consequences. There is going to be a die-off, that’s just how overshoot works. The big question now, is whether or not we have already set in motion our own species extinction. More and more scientists are saying that we indeed have.
peakyeast on Wed, 9th Sep 2015 8:21 pm
Deep into overshoot => Deep into undershoot afterwards.
I only see the developed countries survive if there is a massive preemptive clean-up procedure. Otherwise the mass migrations will destroy them.
Our politicians (Denmark), guided by the all wise civil servant, are allowing the migrants because the civil-servant economists says that we must have more “young” people to support the ageing population.
They are clearly expecting continous usage for uneducated breeders and workers. This does not equal any kind of a “powerdown”.
Newfie on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 5:20 am
Nuclear snake oil.
hosj on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 5:44 am
We aren’t going to wipe ourselves out completely. All we need is a population of at least 50 somewhere, somehow, and we have enough genetic diversity to bring back the species.
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 6:40 am
hosj, I don’t think 50 is enough to keep the species alive. They would have to be a very diverse genetic spread and extremely healthy in their late teens or early 20s to reproduce sufficiently to overcome normal accidents, sickness, poisoning, etc. After all, they aren’t likely to have the skills needed to survive in a radioactive, polluted, hot world where most food species are already extinct. Nor to live more than 30-40 years at best.
The previous hunter gatherers, only had predators to worry about and they could see and hear those. Can you hear radioactivity? Virus? Bacteria? Jealousy? (You don’t expect that to go away do you? LOL) The tribes that wandered the earth in prehistory still interbred and drank from the wide gene pool to prevent mutations. They had it easy compared to those 50 you are talking about.
I don’t give the species homo sapiens more than a 1 in 1,000 chance of seeing the year 2100.
meld on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 6:52 am
There is no way the human race is dying out at least for a few more hundreds of thousands of years. The basic map for the future is Catabolic collapse
Economic collapse (happening now)
War and Climate refugees (happening now)
Disaster capitalism (happening now)
Race Wars over land, religion, remaining resources (brewing in the pot)
These will happen over the next 50 -100 years until the collapse slows. At that point I would suggest feudalism will reign for a very long time in many parts of the world with pockets of more enlightened areas here and there.
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:04 am
Also, hosj, I think that the “developed countries” are going to see the most violent and total die off of any place on earth. Why? Lack of self-sufficiency skills, drug dependency, obesity, denial, stupidity and the tendency to riot at the smallest provocation.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/americas-heroin-epidemic/road-back-officials-addicts-face-long-rehab-waits-n421661 (US)
http://www.stripes.com/pentagon-live-anthrax-breach-hits-50-states-9-countries-1.365927
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mexican-opium-production-rises-to-meet-heroin-demand-in-us-10478139.html
And on and on…
In other news: “Russia and China, friends once again, are cooperating to provide an alternative. Trump’s words reflect the real concerns about the wealthy elite. Not only does “the whole world hate us;” they have another option to turn toward. The New Silk Road, the rising economic bloc oriented toward construction, points to a way out of war, fascism, and chaos. The unity and cooperation of Russia and China is an essential part of the Eurasian alternative to the destructive, cannibalistic capitalism that has taken power in western countries.”
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/09/russia-and-china-together-the-greatest-fear-of-donald-trump/
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:58 am
Dream on meld. There is no long term future for humans. We sealed our doom long ago when we let the hydrocarbon genie out of the bottle and greed took over our thought processes. We have worked hard for our own extinction and now it is time to pay the debt for our 200+ year old party. Your 200+ slaves are about to leave you and the real world is not a fun place if you are a typical American.
zoidberg on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:01 am
Lol you doomers must be time travellers from the future to so completely understand the complex systems of society and global climate so well.
Why doesn’t everyone recognize the truth!?!?
Davy on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:23 am
At least Doomers trust science and common sense that tells them things are not adding up with societies narrative. Cornucopians primarily want to believe in magic. They have been told if you are optimistic things happen. Hollywood and media adverts tell them this constantly. They love that feeling of happiness and satisfaction they get from pure optimism. This is why when SHTF they are going to be very afraid.
apneaman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:48 am
zoid, try looking at the past. When it comes to huge increases in CO2 we know exactly what happens – it’s written in the rocks – fossils, geochemistry, paleontology, etc – you know science? The exact same science that makes the modern world possible. The basics of it are elementary school and high school level physics and chemistry. Of course one cannot learn it or accept it if one has an inflexible worldview. I guess it takes a lot of compartmentalizing. You can see the same thing in action with green lefties who refuse to accept that alternative energy systems are not green and cannot be scaled up and cannot get near replacing oil. There have also been millions and millions of man hours spent on studying past and present societies. What tools do you use to come to your conclusions zoid?
GregT on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 11:38 am
“Lol you doomers must be time travellers from the future to so completely understand the complex systems of society and global climate so well.”
Society has nothing to do with it zoid. Society is a result of excess energy. The more energy available the more complex a society can become. Mankind does not need complex society to survive.
Global climate will become problematic for sure, especially when food production and water supplies are taken into consideration. People can always migrate to areas of less water stress, and/or become nomadic, as was the case in the past.
The big game changers are loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, and the stalling of the gulf stream. All of which have the real potential to cause a global mass extinction event. All of which are already occurring, and much faster than previously thought.