Hunting the holy grail of fusion

Over the years, fusion’s lure of limitless energy has tempted many more scientists and politicians into the same trap of wishful thinking. In 2002 one set of researchers announced that they had achieved bubble fusion, while in 1989 another group announced that they had achieved cold fusion. All have ended in retractions, recrimination and humiliation.

What, then, are we to make of a new announcement last week, again from Harwell, that Britain could once more be on the road to achieving nuclear fusion?
It is not just new technology which is opening doors for Dunne. His proposal also comes at just the right time with the twin threats of climate change and energy insecurity prompting renewed global interest in fusion as a potential source of power.

The European Union is, for example, already backing ITER, a much larger project under construction in France, which is also supported by Japan and America. It will attempt fusion by a completely different approach, using powerful magnetic fields to heat and contain the fusion fuel. The Americans are also going it alone with their National Ignition Facility under construction in California, which will use some of the world’s largest lasers for fusion research. Dunne hopes to use its work as a basis for his own.

“What we are seeing is a radical shift in the politics of energy,” said Malcolm Grim-ston, an expert in energy policy based at Chatham House, the think tank.

“In the 1990s, Europe and especially Britain had plentiful energy in the form of coal and North Sea oil and gas, so the interest in fusion research waned. In the past few years, however, climate change and the realisation that we are running out of oil and gas are promoting a longer-term view.

Fusion research has benefited from that.”

“Fusion should never be seen as a way of guaranteeing energy security or as an excuse to shirk our responsibilities on cutting climate change emissions,” said Dunne

Sunday Times