With significant advances in technology and significant private investment, the U.S. fusion sector could be producing electricity within a decade, industry officials say.
In this process, which powers the sun, two atomic nuclei combine and release large amounts of energy. But private companies around the world are also hopeful that decades of research will eventually culminate in fusion power plants being connected to the power grid in the 2030s.
This topic arose amid an influx of cash. In two years, private sector investment more than doubled, reaching a total of $5.9 billion at the end of 2023, while public sector investment was just $271 million.
Part of the hype stems from what experts see as an imminent tipping point where theoretical science will soon become reality.
“It’s not just about doing the science, it’s about actually delivering the product,” said Dennis White of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Roughly two-thirds of global startups plan to connect their first fusion power plant to the grid by 2035 at the latest, according to a study by the Fusion Industries Association (FIA).
Last year, Helion Energy, a Washington state fusion power startup, signed a deal with Microsoft to bring 50 megawatts (MW) of capacity online by 2029.
“Something amazing has happened in the last few years,” Pravesh Patel of startup Focused Energy said at the energy conference CERAWeek.
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“It’s like when the Wright brothers took off for the first time,” he said, citing the flight of the first powered airplane in 1903. “People didn’t realize it was possible. It’s no longer just a theory.”
Recent major milestones include an experiment conducted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California in December 2022, which produced more energy than was used to create fusion. of energy was released from nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion consists of assembling two atomic nuclei derived from hydrogen (usually deuterium and tritium) in a sealed container at heat of more than 100 million degrees Celsius.
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Together, they form helium nuclei, which release neutrons that hit the reactor walls and raise their temperature.
This heat is converted into electricity via the steam produced when the water comes into contact with the outside of the reactor.
Nuclear fusion has the advantage of producing no exhaust gases. It also produces less waste than its cousin, nuclear fission, and has no potential for radiological hazards.
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Most startups choose magnetic confinement technology, which is used in the most famous nuclear reactor model, tokamaks. This is different from the laser-based inertial confinement method chosen by LLNL.
Helion, on the other hand, recovers energy directly from inside the reactor without using steam, and the process produces fewer neutrons, reducing wall protrusions and their erosion.
A Helion spokesperson said the approach would be “advantageous for commercialization.”
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Until recently, the economic feasibility of fusion seemed uncertain because magnetic confinement required the production of huge magnets.
However, a recently published study by researchers at MIT and the start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems shows that fusion is possible with much smaller magnets than originally imagined.
“Overnight, this reduced the cost per watt to 40,” White told MIT News. “There is a chance that nuclear fusion will become a reality” in energy supply, he said.
With $2 billion in private capital, Commonwealth is the most highly funded company in the sector. The plan is to start operating the demonstration reactor SPARC next year, followed by the first power plant in the early 2030s.
Although many uncertainties remain, if the Commonwealth and Helion are successful, the United States could become the first country to produce commercial electricity from fusion, which would be at least as likely as any other country by 2035. It is at a stage where even the national government is not aiming for it.
“The Commonwealth is a great example of what can be done and how fast it can go when there are commercial incentives like this in the private sector rather than the public sector,” Patel said.
“The United States has a particularly good track record in this regard,” White said, noting the ability of university labs to translate research into products (often more smoothly than labs in other countries). , pointed to the strong venture capital sector that makes that possible. To get your startup off the ground.
From the semiconductor revolution to the Internet revolution, “America has won these kinds of competitions,” White said.
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