MIT Plans To Build Nuclear Fusion Plant By 2033

Mallory Locklear reports via Engadget: MIT announced yesterday that it and Commonwealth Fusion Systems -- an MIT spinoff -- are working on a project that aims to make harvesting energy from nuclear fusion a reality within the next 15 years. The ultimate goal is to develop a 200-megawatt power plant. MIT also announced that Italian energy firm ENI has invested $50 million towards the project, $30 million of which will be applied to research and development at MIT over the next three years. MIT and CFS plan to use newly available superconducting materials to develop large electromagnets that can produce fields four-times stronger than any being used now. The stronger magnetic fields will allow for more power to be generated resulting in, importantly, positive net energy. The method will hopefully allow for cheaper and smaller reactors. The research team aims to develop a prototype reactor within the next 10 years, followed by a 200-megawatt pilot power plant.

Comments

Re:LOL

[sheramil]

The big money isn't in power from nuclear fusion, it's in research towards nuclear fusion.

Fusion likely uneconomical vs. alternatives

[PeterM from Berkeley]

I'm not sure fusion will ever be economical even if we get it working. Fusion has to compete against direct conversion technologies, where energy is directly converted from its original form into electricity.

Solar voltaic converts light energy directly into electricity. Wind turbines turn energy from moving air directly into electricity. Gas turbines burn natural gas directly in turbines that generate electricity.

Most fusion reactions create a lot of their energy in the form of fast neutrons, whose energy can't be converted to electricity directly, but must instead be used to heat up steam, and the hot steam then is used to turn turbines and generate electricity. This is indirect conversion, and the argument I've heard is that steam conversion plants cost more all by themselves than many direct conversion technologies do--therefore fusion reactions that generate the bulk of energy in fast neutrons will be uneconomical by comparison.

Coal plants too, incidentally--there's a reason no new coal plants are being built in the USA--they're uneconomical compared to natural gas turbine generation. And fusion plants will be extremely capital intensive.

Furthermore, plasmas in thermal equilibrium that produce energy in charged particles instead of neutrons (which would allow for direct conversion), cool off faster via Bremsstrahlung radiation than they self-heat from their own fusion reactions. So direct conversion from fusion would have to come from nonequilibrium plasmas. And nonequilibrium plasmas are really, really unstable--they tend to thermalize very, very fast.

Bottom line, I'm not optimistic about terrestrial fusion in any form being economical when it has to compete with solar, wind, and natural gas. Leave planet Earth and go past the orbit of say, Jupiter, and I could see it being a good solution way out there.

Re:Yeah, and a rocket to Mars while they're at it

[Kjella]

OTOH, the secret to never accomplishing anything is to stop trying.

Yeah, even though it's ridiculously hard I think research into high energy power is essential, you can always say we should become greener and smarter but in the end physics dictate that it takes a certain amount of power to drive all the household appliances. Sure for a CPU/GPU you can improve calculations/watt but for a water boiler it takes 1 calorie of energy to heat 1g of water 1C and if you can change that you'll have a closet full of Nobel prizes. If we want to give ~10 billion people a modern standard of living we need energy. If we want to start a Mars colony we need energy. If we want to explore the universe we need energy. I don't know how feasible it is to make a miniature sun here on earth, but it's one helluva power source. It's the kind of thing it's probably worth mastering even if it takes us 100 years or 1000 years. I'll admit I'd like to see results a little sooner, but it's like the people researching longevity and immortality. For humanity it looks like a smart topic of research even if it won't arrive in time to save my ass.

Of course you will always have speculative and sham research looking for grants. You will always have dead ends and people beating a dead horse. But I feel pretty confident that these researchers believe in what they're doing and is making an honest attempt. There's a helluva lot of medical researchers trying to find the cure for cancer, many of them won't achieve much at all. But I think the vast majority is genuinely trying. Comparing them to a politician posturing for his reputation while not realistically even beginning to fund the necessary programs is grossly unfair.