Nuclear Fusion: an expensive, unnecessary distraction

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OPINION – Nuclear fusion: the phrase raises goosebumps on the skin of eager investors, salivating at the potential payout of being part of an effort to provide limitless, clean energy. Since 2020, fusion startups have raised over $21 billion in venture capital, possibly setting a record unparalleled before the dawn of AI.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about the ability of fusion to generate limitless venture capital. But will it ever, can it ever, generate electricity?

If you ask experts with no skin in the game, the answer is more sobering.

Research physicist Daniel Jassby, a veteran of Princeton’s esteemed Plasma Physics Laboratory, is one of many skeptics who remain unconvinced of fusion’s commercial prospects. In a comprehensive 2022 overview, he came to the following conclusion:

“In recent years, a steady flow of press releases from nuclear fusion research projects has hailed breakthrough advances and new record yields,” Jassby writes. “Despite the relentlessly optimistic tone of these announcements and the repeated claims that the prospects for commercialization have never looked brighter, the stark reality is that practical fusion-based electric power remains a distant prospect. It is likely unachievable anytime in the next half a century…even then, it may still remain beyond our grasp.”

John Holdren, a science advisor to four U.S. presidents who also worked at the Princeton lab, is equally circumspect. In an open letter titled “Fusion Breakthroughs in Context,” he examines the two primary tracks being investigated for providing containment, or holding hydrogen gas in one place long enough for fusion to occur. About inertial confinement fusion (ICF), currently being tested at Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, Holdren writes,

“The Livermore breakthrough used the world’s most powerful laser, bigger than three football fields, to create a single micro-explosion…a practical fusion reactor based on this approach would need 10-20 times more fusion yield per ‘shot’ than the electricity supplied to the laser, hence 2500-5000 times the yield of the Livermore experiment, and it would need to operate at rate of about 10 shots per second.  The current Livermore device can manage 2 shots per day [emphasis original].”

About progress on Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) he is more optimistic, but the bottom line is the same:

“The additional hurdles that need to be surmounted in order to arrive at a practical magnetic-fusion reactor are formidable. It seems very unlikely that fusion reactors of any type will be contributing significant electricity to the power grid before the second half of this century; and, even on that timescale, it is not obvious that they can be made both reliable and inexpensive enough to compete with other options. “

So, does that mean we’re close to achieving commercial fusion power? No, it means we’re not even close to it. That we may never achieve it, and even if we do, it may never be economical. And even if it is, it will be too late to make a significant difference in the fight against climate change.

On Tuesday an op-ed appeared in the Weekly with the same hyperbole being fronted by developers: that fusion energy “offers a pathway to clean, safe, and reliable energy capable of meeting humanity’s needs for generations”, that it “would be capable of producing virtually limitless power without producing harmful byproducts or long-lasting nuclear waste”, and other wild claims without a shred of evidence to offer in support.

For the purpose of addressing climate change, fusion amounts to a distraction from the only realistic strategy before us: building out well-understood, safe, pressurized-water nuclear reactors as quickly as possible, 439 of which are already in operation around the world. We need affordable sources that can supply the abundant carbon-free electricity developing countries are demanding, and we need it in time to make a difference. It’s all about time – and for tilting at energy windmills, there’s no more of it to waste.

Carl Wurtz, Executive Director of Fission Transition, is a lifelong environmentalist and clean-energy advocate.