Want to solve the greenhouse gas problem and stop climate change dead in its tracks? Nature has shown us a terrific way to do it. It's just that we haven't figured out a practical way to copy the natural process. It's called fusion power. All you have to do is walk outdoors and feel the warmth of the Sun to experience it. Nuclear fusion is the way the Sun – as well as all the trillions of other stars in the Universe – generate clean energy with zero use of fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases.
If fusion power can be commercialized, it will have two huge advantages over the three key "renewable" technologies – solar, wind, and hydropower – which are presently available: it will operate 24/7/365 without regard for the sun shining, the wind blowing, or a river running. Not only that, it will be theoretically available throughout the world, irrespective of geography or climate. We could switch all of our electricity generation, and eventually all of our vehicle power generation, to fusion. We'd still burn fossil fuel for airplanes, and we'd generate some greenhouse gases from other sources, but most likely, the world's trees could soak up the greenhouse gases we'd generate.
Fusion might be just about a perfect solution to the problem of climate change.
If we could just figure out a way to mimic the Sun and generate fusion power.
While scientists haven't yet actually created a viable fusion process, we actually may finally have the "recipe" for completing the task. The "recipe" is based upon one successfully used to commercialize three other technologies: nuclear power, spaceflight, and the electric automobile industry. Here's the three step recipe:
Step 1: get the government to invest heavily in basic scientific research
Step 2: spin off that government research into private enterprise
Step 3: get those private enterprises to create a commercial product.
This isn't some "pie in the sky" recipe, as we can turn to multiple real-life examples of its application. Let's consider three of them: 1) commercial nuclear power; 2) commercial spaceflight; and 3) electric powered vehicles.
Scientists have long known about nuclear fission – the method of splitting atoms to release energy. Theory was transformed into practice through the U.S. government's Manhattan Project. The government spent huge sums to turn basic scientific research into the atomic bombs that were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
There's no way nuclear power could have been developed without basic and applied research funded by the US government. The good news is that that research also resulted in a useful, and peaceful, application – electricity generated from nuclear fission. The research that produced those weapons created the way to generate environmentally clean power.
The technology underlying the atomic bombs was then adapted by industry to build nuclear power plants. Companies such as Westinghouse began building commercial nuclear power plants after World War II.
The same recipe was used for spaceflight. Governments did the basic research – again for military purposes – to launch rockets into space. Besides the military application, the technology was adapted to launch humans into space, as well as communications, weather, and GPS satellites. We've all benefitted immensely from this. That basic governmental effort has now resulted into the launch of private space companies such as SpaceX.
In the future, much of the job of building and launching rockets with satellites will fall to SpaceX and its commercial brethren. This is very good because these companies have demonstrated they can get the job done at a fraction of the cost of the government.
The third example of this is the electric vehicle industry. Basic research, much funded by the government, produced technology to create battery storage. Commercial companies such as Tesla have now adapted that technology to create the electric vehicle industry.
Which brings us to nuclear fusion. In contrast to splitting atoms, as done in nuclear bombs and power plants, nuclear fusion involves the release of energy through the fusion of atoms. As with the previous examples, governments have provided huge amounts of funding to try to figure out how to do fusion on a commercial basis. The technology keeps getting better over time, but it still takes more power to start a fusion reaction than is yielded from it, thus rendering it still uneconomic. The good news is that scientists are getting closer to breakeven.
Governments are still pouring tremendous resources into making fusion a viable process. Two of the best examples are the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), still under construction near Toulouse, France, and the Joint European Torus (JET) being built in England.
All of this government-funded research into nuclear fusion has set the stage for a potential repeat of the "recipe" outlined above. Lots of this government research is now being spun off into private enterprises that hope to strike it rich by commercializing the government-funded fusion technology.
There are a bunch of companies now trying to commercialize fusion technology, but two of particular interest are Commonweath Fusion Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts and General Fusion based just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Both companies, along with some others, are taking a different approach to fusion than ITER and JET, the two government funded research enterprises mentioned earlier. While ITER and JET are mammoth undertakings, the commercial start ups are trying what could be called a "go small" strategy: much smaller fusion plants that will cost much less money.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems was founded by six researchers from MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. The company's goal is to build an ARC reactor (short for affordable, robust, and compact). As reported by MIT, "Researchers [at the school] have designed a way to use high-temperature superconductors to produce powerful magnetic fields that provide superior confinement of the hot plasma — enabling a net energy fusion device at much smaller scale than did previous experiments. The MIT design uses established science for the plasma confinement, and thus puts fusion power plants within reach on a faster time-scale than previously thought possible."
So what makes Commonwealth Fusion's technologists think they can build a commercial fusion reactor that's just a fraction of the size and cost of the European governmental projects mentioned earlier? The key may be a new technology called REBCO, which stands for rare earth barium copper oxide technology. This is being incorporated into Commonwealth's reactor. Does it sound like "pie in the sky"? Maybe, but it's received major investments from ENI, a big European energy company, as well as numerous investment funds.
General Fusion, based near Vancouver, is applying a similar "go small" strategy. However, the company is taking an even more radical approach. To date, the standard approach to creating nuclear fusion has been to place a high energy plasma in what's called a torus, then utilize high powered magnets to induce fusion.
Commonwealth's system is a smaller scale version of this, just one with a different type of magnet. However, where Commonwealth has built its technology based upon an improved version of magnets, General Fusion is trying to dispense with magnets entirely. The company's technology – developed by Dr. Michel LaBerge and his colleagues – employs what's called the Magnetized Target Fusion System, which does not utilize either lasers or magnets but, instead, relies upon steam piston technology. According to the company, the "Magnetized Target Fusion system uses a sphere filled with molten lead-lithium that is pumped to form a vortex. A pulse of magnetically-confined plasma fuel is then injected into the vortex. Around the sphere, an array of pistons drive a pressure wave into the centre of the sphere, compressing the plasma to fusion conditions. This process is then repeated, while the heat from the reaction is captured in the liquid metal and used to generate electricity via a steam turbine."
General Fusion has also attracted outside investment capital, including funding from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
Will either Commonwealth or General Fusion be successful? Very hard to tell at this point. To be clear, no one yet has demonstrated a viable way to generate "net" fusion, meaning more power generated than consumed to make the reaction possible. Nuclear fusion has been a "just around the corner" technology for many years. Fortunately, the "corner" really appears closer than ever. Experts report that fusion technology has made major advances in the past ten years. It's still, though, "just around the corner." While the technology has gotten better, the key change may be the adoption of the "recipe" outlined above: build upon the base of government funded research, then use the discipline of the market to create a commercially viable approach.
Even if ITER and JET, the two government-funded projects described above, are successful in producing "net positive" fusion power, there's no way fusion power could be commercially viable if it's necessary to have such large, costly facilities. It's one thing to spend such sums on research, but entirely different if one wants to commercialize it. Fusion power is really only viable if it can be commercialized. Thus, while ITER and JET are important for research purposes, the key is to get commercial results from the spin-out companies. In that regard, the commercial start ups are truly crucial.
Commonwealth and General Fusion both hope to get to "net positive" results by the early 2020's. It's now mid-2019, so if they're correct, that truly will be "just around the corner."
We've got at least three successful results from the "recipe" – commercial nuclear power, commercial spaceflight, and commercially viable electric vehicles. Hopefully, either or both Commonwealth and General Fusion, or one of their worthy commercial competitors, will crack the code of nuclear fusion. If and when that happens, the greenhouse gas debate will completely change!
