Is nuclear fusion the best hope for clean energy?
There’s a kind of nuclear power you may not be familiar with. Similar to atoms colliding in the sun. That’s nuclear fusion and it could revolutionise how clean energy is produced on earth.
You actually have to go hotter than the sun.
But as a new wave of experiments heats up can fusion live up to the hype?
NOW&NEXT
Fusion: The future of green energy?
In the heart of English countryside Culham seems like a typically quaint village. You probably wouldn’t know that the area is home to a cluster of energy companies all trying to turn an ambitious idea into reality.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
I am working in an industry that’s doing incredible things. That offers the promise to decarbonise countries and industries for the future.
For more than a decade Tokamak Energy has been working on a dream to make nuclear fusion an important source of global energy. The promise is that fusion could give the world carbon free near limitless energy forever.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
When we get the gyrotron whereabouts is that going to be in relation to the device do you know?
Everybody in any news flow is seeing the impact of climate change and we need green energy that can provide what fusion can provide which is base load power when you need it on the grip in an industrial setting to decarbonise.
Nuclear fusion would also work in any weather unlike solar and wind and create far less nuclear waste than today’s nuclear power plants.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
It is remarkably efficient so one kilogram of fusion fuel is equivalent to 10 million kilograms of fossil fuel.
So what is nuclear fusion? Today’s nuclear power stations use nuclear fishion where heavy elements are split into fragments. Nuclear fusion is the reverse. It’s a process inspired by what happens in the sun.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
Here you have hydrogen atoms colliding and fusing, they form helium in the process and they emit a neutron and it’s the neutrons that carry the energy. They actually have to go hotter than the sun, six or seven times hotter than the sun to 100 million degrees Celsius and also exerting pressures from very, very high field magnets.
So it’s a small wonder that scientists have been trying to make fusion work for a long time. Around 70 years. The key requirement is a reactor which can create the extreme conditions needed. Warrick’s team uses the most tested kind called a Tokamak.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
Within that Tokamak we heat up the plasma and then we feed it with fuel in a commercial device that fuel is Deuterium and Tritium and they are the two isotopes of hydrogen that collide and create fusion.
In 2022 Tokamak Energy heated plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius. A record for this kind of Tokamak and the temperature a fusion power station will need in the future. But so far no fusion experiment has managed to produce the sustained energy needed for a power station. Tokamak Energy aims to achieve this within a decade.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
To bring fusion to the grid in the 2030’s we have to overcome a number of challenges. We have achieved great things in the science; we still have some engineering challenges to overcome in the fields of material science liquid metal.
To help overcome the challenges Tokamak Energy and other companies have some useful partners just a few miles away near the village of Culham. Here scientists working for the British Government have been running fusion experiments with European partners for 40 years.
Warrick Matthew, CEO Tokamak Energy
We are just down the road from Culham, that campus has UK Atomic Energy Authority there but also a number of private companies and we work very closely developing the talent that we need for fusion in the future so this is the place to be right now.
If this much hyped energy source is going to take off this fusion between the private and public sectors may offer the best hope.
Ian Chapman, CEO UK Atomic Energy Authority
We now have a cluster of activity, a whole load of other research facilities and also companies using our facilities. We have General Fusion a Canadian company moving to our campus. We have First Light Fusion, Tokamak Energy, both UK born companies building their next facilities here, collaborating with our people and that helps all of them to get there quicker frankly.
In the last decade the number of fusion focussed private companies has rocketed, growing to at least 42 around the world and attracting more than 6 billion dollars in investment. Commonwealth Fusion Systems in America is backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos has invested in General Fusion which is using a different kind of reactor to a Tokamak. This diversity of approaches increases the chance of fusion making it to the grid. There are no guarantees but fusions potential to transform energy production makes it worth the energy, maybe even all the energy in the world.
Ian Chapman, CEO UK Atomic Energy Authority
I came to fusion to make a difference to the world. Since I was 18 I was convinced that we needed to do something about climate change and provide low carbon sources of energy. I still believe that fusion is the best pathway that we have and we need to make fusion happen.
Charlotte Howard, Executive Editor
The Economist
Hi, I’m Charlotte Howard, Executive Editor at The Economist. If you’d like to read more about the energy transition, please click on the link opposite and if you would like to watch more of our Now & Next series, please click on the other link. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe.