Like nuclear fission though, nuclear fusion produces radioactive material which has to be stored until the radioactivity wears off. Millions of parents let their children inhale it to talk in a funny high-pitched voice. That doesn’t cause climate change and it’s safe to breathe in. Whereas burning fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases, the fusion reaction emits only helium. The UK’s new post-Brexit Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) wants to beat Iter by getting fusion power on the grid by 2040. “That indicates that if we successfully build Iter according to design, the Iter machine will perform as expected – or better,” the spokesperson said. While this energy was only enough to boil 60 kettles, the spokesperson said it proved that JET, a similar machine to Iter, worked as expected. The mainly EU-funded Iter plans to generate “industrial-scale” fusion energy by 2050.Īn Iter spokesperson told Climate Home they had a breakthrough in February when the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion machine in England produced a record amount of energy. A government-sponsored report in 2021 was more conservative, pointing to 2035-40 as a reasonable goal. The US government is working with private companies a plan to get pilot plants by around 2030. The nuclear fusion developers timelines vary.Ĭommonwealth Fusion Systems, who Whyte works with, hopes to have a demonstration plant up and running in 2025 and sell electricity to the grid by the early 2030s. “She’s already told us that fusion is the power source of the universe.” “It’s very important to listen to her,” he said in a TED talk. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) nuclear fusion professor Dennis Whyte says that pursuing nuclear fusion is just listening to “Mother Nature”. Minus the turbine, it’s how the sun and others stars produce the energy which powers life on earth. Nuclear fusion produces energy by smashing hydrogen nucleuses together to produce heat and to spin a turbine to make electricity. That’s splitting one nucleus into two, producing a load of energy which you can either use to spin a turbine to produce electricity or let off in an explosion. When we talk about nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs, we’re talking about nuclear fission. Silicon Valley venture capitalists are betting on it too, like tech investor Sam Altman, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel. Of the firms surveyed, 93% believe that fusion-produced electricity will be on the grid in the 2030s or before, a 10% increase on the same question in 2021.įinancial backers include fossil fuel companies like Chevron and Eni, US technology giant Google and Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo. These fusion companies are increasingly confident. They argue star power could help the world get and stay off fossil fuels, particularly towards the middle and end of this century.Ī survey by the Fusion Industry Association found that funding for nuclear fusion research had more than doubled between 20 to $4.8 billion, with the vast majority from private sources. And we have already have technologies which can produce clean, cheap and limitless electricity from the sun, wind and waves.īut, while they don’t dispute the urgency of renewable investment or that there are still obstacles to overcome, nuclear fusion advocates can point to a recent scientific breakthrough. Sceptics will point out that scientists working on nuclear fusion have been claiming it’s a decade away for much longer than a decade. But that’s what some scientists, backed by growing private finance, believe nuclear fusion could deliver as soon as next decade. Like Wakanda’s vibranium, it sounds too good to be true. Man-made stars producing clean, cheap, almost limitless electricity.
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