UK Joins Laser Nuclear Fusion Project

arisvega writes with this quote from the BBC: "The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with [the National Ignition Facility in the U.S.] to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source. ... Part of the problem has been that the technical ability to reach 'breakeven' — the point at which more energy is produced than is consumed — has always seemed distant. Detractors of the idea have asserted that 'fusion energy is 50 years away, no matter what year you ask,' said David Willetts, the UK's science minister. 'I think that what's going on both in the UK and in the US shows that we are now making significant progress on this technology,' he said. 'It can't any longer be dismissed as something on the far distant horizon.'"

Comments

The investment sense is not, the science is sound.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason its only ever 50 years away is because funding required to make it 0 years away is never accepted and projects are habitually underfunded and cut short before they reach their goals. Several scientific groups and individual scientists have said they'll bring it to us now if they get their X billion for funding. So far no government or company has had the good faith to grant the amount needed. There are prototypes from the 1950's which might have worked, but at the time cost'd some enormous amount. The deal is the science behind it is sound, but the investment sense is not for anyone with the ability to start it up. Its a little like building solar arrays in space, it will pay off, but in like 200 years.

Technological threshold

[Baloroth]

Unlike many technologies, fusion power requires a certain technological threshold to achieve, where various different technologies (possibly in the order of hundreds) finally reach the point where they are advanced enough to achieve breakeven or beyond. We need an electromagnetic containment system, a fuel-production system, monitoring and control, ignition (probably laser), even the materials the reactor is made of need to be of a certain kind. Many of these technologies we do not have, making fusion power more than simply requiring one specific breakthrough like many other technologies do.

It's a bit like how smartphones were developed. We needed not only better touchscreens, but better batteries, smaller computers, faster wireless systems, and more compact storage. Once a certain threshold was achieved, it became possible to build the modern smartphone. Before, things like them were possible, but a certain level of many technologies was required before it could really become practical.

The additional problem with fusion is not only to achieve breakeven, but to do so competitively versus other sources of power (specifically, coal). Coal is pretty cheap in terms of raw cost (the long-term consequences are much more expensive, but the investors can safely ignore most of those.) This is why fusion has been perpetually 50 years in the future: because so many things need to come together to make it practical that one single breakthrough, even if it is massive, simply won't be enough to make it practical. It is a technology we should pursue with tremendous effort, and which should one day pay off in one form or another, but it isn't a magic bullet and won't be for some time.

Re:erm 50 years away.

[Artraze]

People say that, and I understand the notion, but it really misses the point.

Fission power _always_ worked. At it's most basic level you could attach a thermocouple to radium and boom, power. Hell, just put enough enriched uranium (we had known about its fission properties) in one place and BOOM for sure. The only question was the actual engineering engineering effort to design a useful plant. Fusion is different. While it has long been possible to actually make it happen, getting it to produce a useful amount of energy has not. The science just isn't (or at least hasn't been) there. Then we need engineering on top of that... It's one thing to create 2J or heat with 1J of electricity in the lab and a whole different one it converting to electricity and refining the fuel and still have a usable energy source... basically, not possible.

So, as far as funding is concerned, the ITER, is projected to cost $25 billion. That's not really chump change for a research reactor: consider that the Shippingport reactor (first commercial fission) cost only $500 million to make, adjusted for inflation. Oh, and this one isn't expected to produce power... Their _goal_ is to produce 10x in heat what they put into making the plasma. Specifically, they aren't counting conversion to electricity, the costs of refining fuel (it's tritium/duterium) and other operation costs (coolant pumps, etc). Also, they don't yet have a design that will last long enough vs. the fusion products to be commercially viable. And the reactor core will become radioactive, too, making replacement especially fun.

That last bit is the real take away here. They have $25 billion in funding, and they don't even know what a useful version could be made out of. That isn't a $25 billion question, that's more like a $25 million question. And it's one that needs to be answered in a big way, and yet that's not their focus. Am I to believe if they got $26 billion that the extra 4% would go to solving these vital problems? Sure their big demo reactor is fun^W^Wshould be helpful, and yeah, if they had twice the budget they probably could have finished it sooner. But what's the point? It's still not a halfway viable design for reasons completely unrelated to funding.