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MIT Plans To Build Nuclear Fusion Plant By 2033

Posted by BeauHD on from the ambitious-goals dept.

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.

4 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Not completely silly by joe_frisch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If they can use higher magnetic fields, that increases the pressure and decreases required volume of the reactor to get to breakeven.

    That said, the picture the show looks really small even with high field magnets .

    We'll see. There have been a lot of claims of practical fusion in the next few years. So far non have worked, but its not fundamentally impossible.

    1. Re:Not completely silly by quanminoan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A lot of great fusion designs rely on very high fields ~20 T or larger, this has been known for a while. The superconducting technology is now just getting there so some exciting possibilities are becoming realities. Still, not a walk in the park designing large magnets with high temperature superconductor (HTS). HTS joining of cables (splicing) is very tricky as many are powder-in-tube, so for various reasons an internal splice in a solenoid is a trick (that I have not seen demonstrated). It can be figured out though. Right now the biggest hindrance is cost, most HTS requires silver in the powder tube for chemistry reasons, making the cost very high - thousands of USD per meter.

      As other posters have mentioned high magnetic field allows reducing the volume, higher densities, maybe even newer modes. As an engineer however one thing I always see in many of these new designs is a lack of respect for radiation damage on the superconductors; they can't handle high radiation so while it's tempting to put them as close to the plasma region for increased densities etc., you need a reasonable balance. The lockheed design was very guilty of this.

  2. Yet another tokamak by WaffleMonster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They should have built a stellarator or literally anything other than a tokamak.

    How many tens of billions have been invested in Tokamaks thus far with very little to show for it? Other approaches consistently get shafted for serious funding due to dogma/politics and risk aversion.

    Comparatively peanuts have been spent on stellarators to date and they have already demonstrated far better results than any tokamak ever has.

  3. Re:Fusion likely uneconomical vs. alternatives by WaffleMonster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Of these only natural gas is base load and cheap gas can't last forever. It would be necessary to factor in necessary investments in storage/conversion and transmission to compare the true overall cost of each option.