Spurred on by major technological advances and huge private investment, the US nuclear fusion sector could be producing electricity within 10 years, industry players say.
The process, which powers the Sun and other stars, sees two atomic nuclei combine — and release massive amounts of energy. However, private companies on Earth are also hoping that decades of research might finally culminate in fusion power plants being connected to the grid in the 2030s.
The buzz comes amid an influx of cash: In two years, the private sector has more than doubled its investments, reaching a total of US$5.9 billion at the end of last year, compared with just US$271 million from the public sector.
Photo: AFP/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Part of the hype is derived from what experts see as an impending tipping point, where theoretical science would soon become a reality.
“It’s not just about doing science, it’s actually about delivering products,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center director Dennis Whyte said.
About two-thirds of start-ups from various countries, surveyed by the Fusion Industry Association see the first fusion power plant connected to the power grid by 2035 at the latest.
Last year, Helion Energy Inc, a fusion power start-up in Washington state, signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp for 50 megawatts of capacity to be operational by 2029.
“Remarkable things have happened just in the last couple of years,” Focused Energy Inc chief technology officer Pravesh Patel said at the CERAWeek energy conference in March.
“It’s like the first time the Wright brothers took off the ground,” he said, referring to the first-ever flight of a powered aircraft in 1903. “People can see that it’s possible. It’s no longer theoretical.”
Major recent milestones include an experiment by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California in December 2022, in which more energy was released from the fusion than was used to produce it.
Fusion consists of assembling two atomic nuclei derived from hydrogen, usually deuterium and tritium, in a confined enclosure, at a heat of more than 100 million degrees Celsius.
Together, they form a helium nucleus and release neutrons, which bombard the reactor walls and raise their temperature.
This heat is then converted into electricity, via steam produced when water comes into contact with the outside of the reactor.
Fusion has the advantage of being emissions-free. It also produces less waste than its cousin fission and cannot cause a radiation disaster.
Most start-ups have opted for the magnetic confinement technology used in the tokamak, the best-known reactor model. This differs from the inertial confinement method chosen by LLNL, which uses lasers.
Helion, on the other hand, recovers energy directly from inside the reactor, without using steam, and its process produces less neutrons, thus reducing projections on the walls and their erosion.
Such methods “offer an advantage in getting to commercialization,” a Helion spokesperson said.
Until recently, the economic viability of nuclear fusion appeared uncertain, as magnetic confinement required the manufacture of gigantic magnets.
However, recently published studies by researchers at MIT and start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems have shown that fusion is possible with much smaller magnets than originally imagined.
“Overnight, this has divided the cost per watt by 40,” Whyte told MIT News. “Now fusion has a chance” to become a reality in energy supply, he said.
With US$2 billion in private capital, Commonwealth is by far the company to have raised the most funds in the sector. It plans to activate its demonstration reactor, SPARC, next year, then open its first power plant in the early 2030s.
Many uncertainties remain, but if Commonwealth and Helion are successful, it would enable the US to become the first country to produce commercial electricity through fusion, a step no other nation is aiming for before 2035 at best.
“Commonwealth is a great example of what you can do, and how fast you can go, when you have this commercial incentive in the private sector versus in the public sector,” Patel said.
“The US has a particularly excellent track record of this,” Whyte said.
US university labs’ ability to translate research into products is often smoother than in other countries, Whyte said, adding that the US has a strong venture capital sector to enable start-ups to get off the ground.
From the semiconductor revolution to that of the Internet, “the US has won these kinds of races,” Whyte said.
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