Fusion Energy is Really Possible

As Earth’s inhabitants suffer through what may wind up being the hottest year on record, there’s a Promethean spark of hope. Virtually unlimited fusion energy appears to be, if not right around the corner, at least within hailing distance.

Last December, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility finally succeeded in forcing the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium to undergo a self-sustained fusion reaction. It was an encouraging advancement, though not exactly a breakthrough. 

NIF’s small net energy gain didn’t factor in the energy it took to fire up the 192 ultraviolet lasers that initiated the reaction, which lasted “for the briefest blink of a moment,” as Dina Genkina reported for IEEE Spectrum. While there are lessons to be learned from NIF’s successes and failures, laser-based inertial confinement fusion doesn’t yet provide a practical path to commercial-scale power generation.

There’s also a lot to learn from Iter, the world’s largest fusion experiment, which is now being built in southern France. Since 1985, the project has brought together 35 countries and thousands of scientists and engineers. 

ITER’s magnetic-confinement fusion experiments will happen inside a giant doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak, where powerful superconducting magnets will force hydrogen isotopes to fuse.

Even if Iter succeeds in touching off a sustained fusion reaction, though, it will never harness the energy produced. That crucial engineering step will be accomplished by some other group. 

One team vying to take fusion energy to market is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in Devens, Mass., whose six founders all did research at Iter. In “Tale of the Tape,” page 30, writer Tom Clynes takes us inside CFS’s Sparc pilot project to create a new kind of commercially viable, compact fusion reactor.  READ MORE...