BBC: Fusion energy pushed back beyond 2050

Cartlidge, E. July 11, 2017. Fusion energy pushed back beyond 2050. BBC.

We will have to wait until the second half of the century for fusion reactors to start generating electricity, experts have announced.

A new version of a European “road map” lays out the technological hurdles to be overcome if the processes powering the Sun are to be harnessed on Earth.  The original 2012 version of the road map forecast that a demonstration fusion power plant could be operating in the early 2040s, in order to supply electricity to the grid by 2050. But now the demonstration will be delayed until 2054 caused largely by delays to ITER, a 20 billion Euro reactor being built in the south of France to prove that fusion energy is scientifically and technically feasible.

In fact, according to EUROfusion’s programme manager, nuclear physicist Tony Donné, DEMO’s schedule could slip further, depending on progress both with ITER and a facility to test materials for fusion power plants that has yet to be built.

“2054 is optimistic,” he says.

Fusion involves heating nuclei of light atoms – usually isotopes of hydrogen – to temperatures many times higher than that at the center of the Sun so that they can overcome their mutual repulsion and join together to form a heavier nucleus, giving off huge amounts of energy in the process.  In principle, this energy could provide low-carbon “baseload” electricity to the grid using very plentiful raw materials and generating relatively short-lived nuclear waste. But achieving fusion in the laboratory is a daunting task.

Doughnut-shaped reactors known as tokamaks use enormous magnetic fields to hold a hot plasma of nuclei and their dissociated electrons in place for long enough and at a high enough density to permit fusion.

ITER represents the culmination of 60 years of research. The world’s largest ever tokamak, it will weigh 23,000 tonnes and is designed to generate 10 times the power that it consumes.  But the project has been beset by delays and cost overruns. Originally foreseen to switch on in 2016 and cost around 5 billion Euros, its price has since roughly quadrupled and its start-up pushed back to 2025. Full-scale experiments are now not foreseen until at least 2035.

ITER is also complex politically, an international project with 7 partners: China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. As host, Europe is paying the biggest share of the costs – about 45%.

The roadmap sees ITER as the single most important project in realizing fusion but not one that is designed to generate electricity.

DEMO, a tokamak adapted from the ITER design

This will also cost billions of euros, and is intended to produce several hundred megawatts of electricity for the grid. To do so, it must run continuously for hours, days or ideally years at a time, as opposed to ITER, which will operate in bursts lasting just a few minutes.  DEMO will also have to generate its own supply of tritium (the radioactive isotope of hydrogen which can help drive fusion) by using neutrons it produces to transform lithium (its other hydrogen isotope, deuterium, can instead be extracted from sea water).

Researchers are already starting to develop conceptual designs for DEMO. But because they need results from ITER to draw up a detailed engineering design, their progress is vulnerable to any further delays in France.

Federici argues it is vital to demonstrate electricity generation from fusion “not too far after the middle of the century”. Otherwise, he says, there may no longer be a nuclear industry able to build the commercial fusion plants that would follow, and the public may lose patience.  The subsequent loss of political support, he wrote in the DEMO design report, “would run the risk of delaying fusion electricity well into the 22nd century.”


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9 Responses to BBC: Fusion energy pushed back beyond 2050

  1. …The world’s largest ever tokamak, it will weigh 23,000 tonnes and is designed to generate 10 times the power that it consumes.”

    This is an outdated scale of measurement, though!

    The new scale, postulated in 2017, is to compare the sum of all useful energy-produced by the reactor to the total energy put earlier into constructing the reactor – before it requires its first episode of off-line maintenance procedure.

    The new thesis predicts the useful energy produced will be in an order of magnitude smaller than the total energy put into constructing the device.

    … and is designed to generate 10 times the power that it consumes….”

    Plug in a 1/10 of the power generated back into the same reactor to make it run self-sufficiently – and you’ll have a perpetual motion machine, violating the supreme thermodynamics laws.

    Humans can NOT manufacture energy!

  2. Alpaca Lips Farm says:

    google General Fusion. I have high hopes for them. Even though it would not solve the liquid fuels problem, it could extend civilization – maybe. Pretty much our only hope.

    (love the blog, am a huge fan)

    • energyskeptic says:

      I gave up on trying to describe the DOE review of fusion, but basically the components need to be so perfect down to the atomic level it simply won’t happen. Let alone all the other problems. And that it needs to happen and replace our vast infrastructure within 5 to 20 years before fossils begin the decline curve after the current plateau in earnest (6% exponentially per year). And even if we did come up with a way, we’d destroy the planet. Though as you point out, it’s a moot point, since it doesn’t solve the liquid fuels problem…

      • JT Roberts says:

        This is true. The infrastructure is a one way bet. There are trillions of dollars invested in our liquid fuel transportation system that can’t be written of without collapsing the global economy. Even the EV industry is a scam because they are dependent on the road networks that built by diesel trucks.

        Basically Alice this system is a trap that has begun to close on humanity. What’s happening in Brazil will soon happen here. Fuel though available is too costly for the transportation industry but too cheap for the producers. I really believe the oil shock is technically behind us. Conventional crude peaked in 2005. Unconventional oil of various flavors has never been economic and it is getting worse with rapid depletion.

        By this time next year it will be obvious to all. And the trucks will stop running.

        • Alpaca Lips Farm says:

          I’m wondering why you think by this time next year everyone will know about peak oil? Right now I’m thinking it may be another 2-7 years, based on when decline will start in American oil.

  3. JT Roberts says:

    Unless you can unlock the mystery of gravity fusion will never exist. In order to control a fusion reaction one needs to create the gravity field of the sun here on earth. Can’t be done and won’t be.

  4. NJF says:

    This isn’t helped by the fact that ITER is using a type of fusion that is terrible for generating electricity. DT fusion is the easiest fusion to perform, so they chose it.

    But just because it is easier to get the atoms to fuse does not say anything about the reaction characteristics. It loses 80% of it’s energy in neutrons that bombard the lithium blanket and containment structure (neutrons cannot be contained with a magnetic field because they have no charge).

    Boron is the only long term form of fusion that doesn’t have as bad of a neutron problem. Still has some high energy neutrons from secondary reactions. But it requires (I think) quadruple the temperatures. Yeah, I’m not optimistic either.

    Fission still has tons of room for improvement (4th generation reactors, aka LFTR, etc.). Fusion is just fundamentally not conducive to extracting power. Tokomak doesn’t exchange heat well, etc. Theory is miles away from practice.