Clean power
published on December 29, 2020 |
by Steve Hanley
December 29, 2020 through Steve Hanley
There are two types of nuclear energy: fission and fusion. Nuclear fission is the one we know the most. It involves splitting atoms – isotopes of uranium are the most common – in a process that releases large amounts of heat. That heat is then used to convert water into steam, which is then used to power fairly conventional turbines to generate electricity.
The tokamak of the Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Credit: CFS
Fusion is the flip side of fission. Rather than splitting atoms, they are compressed under extreme heat and pressure. In theory, the result is more heat than is needed to keep the process going, and that excess heat can be used to convert water into steam, which is then used to drive fairly conventional turbines to generate electricity.
Many people think that humanity will find a way to “make science our way out of the global heating problem,” even though many other people have been busy destroying science and scientists lately by calling them charlatans, liars and worse. so often that the word science has become an epithet. ‘You’ve been foofrawdunkin. You are nothing but rock bottom scientist looking to steal money from hardworking taxpayers to put in your own wallet! is how conservative media usually put it.
Despite the stain on the science propagated by the bloody jacknapes surrounding the current alleged leader of the free world, a group of those same scientists – escaped from the insane asylum on the banks of the Charles River, codenamed Massachusetts Institute of Technology – say they have studied all the available fusion energy literature and found a way to create a fusion reactor that is compact and more or less affordable. That is, it costs less than a fleet of aircraft carriers. Their work has recently been published in the Journal of Plasma Physics.
They founded a company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems to build the first fusion reactor based on their new research. It will be called SPARC (who says scientists lack a sense of humor?) And the company claims it will be ready and will supply electricity to the grid by the end of this decade.
The problem with fusion is that the process won’t work until hydrogen isotopes have been heated to hundreds of millions of degrees, according to The Guardian. As you can imagine, something this hot cannot be stored in a normal container made of stainless steel, concrete or even kryptonite. In fact, the only way to contain it is in a tokamak, a device with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. That’s the part that has hindered nuclear physicists so far. The folks at SPARC claim to have invented new magnet technology that allows them to build a compact tokamak that is relatively affordable.
We are all familiar with fusion reactors, it turns out. That bright light in the sky that we call the sun is actually a very large fusion reactor. It’s been doing its thing for billions of years and hopefully it will continue for a while, assuming humans don’t find a way to destroy it like they destroyed almost everything here on Earth. Fusion power is it, the Holy Grail, the sine qua non of energy. In theory, it is capable of producing emission-free electricity forever, at least to a limited extent homo sapiens can understand that term.
Bob Mumgaard, CEO of “These are concrete public predictions that when we build SPARC, the machine will produce net energy and even high gain fusion from the plasma. That is a necessary precondition for building a fusion power plant that the world has been waiting for for decades. The combination of established plasma physics, new innovative magnets and smaller scale opens up new opportunities for commercial fusion energy to make a timely difference to climate change. This is an important milestone for the company and for its global clean technology efforts as we work to get commercial fusion energy on the grid as soon as possible. “
The company says, “CFS and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center are now also building the advanced magnets that will allow CFS to build significantly smaller and less expensive fusion power plants. This partnership is on track to demonstrate a successful 20 Tesla large bore magnet in 2021. This magnet test, the first of its kind in the world, opens a widely identified transformational opportunity for commercial fusion energy. These magnets will then be used in SPARC, which is on track to start construction in 2021 and show net energy gains from fusion for the first time in history by 2025. SPARC will pave the way for the first commercially viable fusion power plant called ARC. “
Why do we need fusion power at a time when wind and solar energy is growing at leaps and bounds? According to Bob Mumgaard, the goal is not to use fusion to replace sun and wind, but to supplement them. “There are things that are going to be difficult with renewables alone, things on an industrial scale, like powering big cities or manufacturing,” he says. The Guardian. “This is where fusion can come into play.”
Martin Greenwald, one of the senior scientists on the SPARC project, adds that a major motivation for the ambitious timeline is meeting energy needs in a warming world. “Merger appears to be one of the possible solutions to get out of our impending climate disaster. What we’ve really done is combine existing science with new material to open up huge new possibilities, ”he says.
Of particular note, the climate plan put forward by incoming President Joe Biden includes investments in advanced nuclear technology. Commonwealth Fusion Systems has attracted investments from a diverse group of funders, including the Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Bill Gates, and Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned energy company. A Recharge News press release said: “Equinor is a broad energy company and we will continue to invest in promising and potentially groundbreaking zero-carbon energy technologies. We invest in merger and CFS because we believe in the technology and the company. “
Will Fusion Power Save Us From Ourselves? Could be. It seems far-fetched, but so were airplanes, microwaves and cell phones at the same time. Legend has it that on New Year’s Eve 1899, the head of the US Patent Office told a colleague, “Anything that can be invented is now invented.” Perhaps we would be wise to open up to this fusion energy hassle.
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About the author
Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his homes in Florida and Connecticut or wherever the Singularity takes him. You can follow him Twitter but not on social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.