In December 2022, scientists at the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) will achieve a breakthrough in a decades-long effort to create an energy source based on the same nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun. Announced. “An incredible engineering marvel,” they declared, and major newspapers soon followed with breathtaking coverage.of washington post He called it “something to really celebrate.” Other commentators raved about the future of fusion as a solution to clean energy, world poverty and even world peace.
Upon inspection, the progress was not as sensational as these reports suggested. The researchers have achieved what is called ignition, a condition in which the fusion reaction produces more energy than it needs to start. However, the scale of the achievement is far from the scale required for commercial power generation, much less ushering in a new era of clean energy. [see “Star Power”]. Reported power demand does not include the power required to build and tune equipment. The entire event lasted only a few seconds. And ironically, the higher-than-expected energy yield damaged some of the diagnostic equipment in the experimental setup, raising questions about whether ignition was even achieved.
He said that this development is a breakthrough to achieve “infinite zero carbon power”. financial times It’s like claiming that the discovery of fire was a milestone on the road to electricity. Such hype does not help the scientific community build and maintain public confidence. It risks diverting resources from real solutions to the climate crisis.
Scientists began working on creating nuclear fusion reactions in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project. Physicist Edward Teller wanted to focus on building fusion bombs. It proved impractical, and just as fusion bombs were superseded by fission weapons during wartime, civil fusion power was superseded by nuclear fission after the war. In the sun, nuclear fusion occurs at millions of degrees. The scientific and technological challenges of harnessing fusion on Earth have been just overwhelming.
In the 1960s and 1970s, physicists realized that a laser could be used to heat hydrogen to a sufficiently high temperature before the gas escaped. After decades of limited progress on controlled fusion reactions, Congress allocated funding for the NIF. Construction began in 1997 he. The first experiments started in 2009. At the time, NIF physicist Siegfried Grenzer was predicting an ignition within the year.
In a short time frame, we must face the climate crisis – in the words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – to achieve “deep, rapid and sustained global greenhouse gas emissions reductions” as soon as possible. Given what has to be achieved, is fusion research worth the potential profit, or is the money better spent elsewhere? How do you distinguish throwing good money after bad results?
NIF cost $3.5 billion to build and has a current annual budget of $380 million. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Science Program will also receive $763 million in funding, totaling about $1.1 billion (the fusion industry claims this amount is too low). . In comparison, his 2022 budget for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory put him at $671 million.
Federal funding for nuclear power has long dwarfed funding for renewable energy and efficiency. According to the Congressional Research Service, from 1948 to 2018, 48 percent of federal energy R&D went into nuclear power (both fission and fusion), compared to less than 13 percent into renewable energy. , less than 11 percent was spent on energy efficiency. This allocation made sense since in 1948 fission and fusion seemed promising and nobody really thought much about the need for efficiency. However, the pattern has continued, with 18% renewable energy share between 1978 and 2018.
For 75 years, the US federal government has invested heavily in fission and fusion nuclear power, but has shown little return. So why are we focusing on speculative technologies that will almost certainly be too late to make a meaningful contribution to climate disaster aversion?
Don’t get me wrong.we should do it Funding fusion research, even $1.1 billion, is just the annual cost of maintaining an aircraft carrier. But fusion is a long game, and it may or may not pay off. It’s not the answer to the climate crisis.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. Scientific American.
