Will Nuclear Fusion Ever Be Viable?

[ScienceNoob]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02022-1

Doesn't look promising. But I thought this was the future? If this doesn't work how will humanity get its energy in the long run?

[Peter Pedant]

oh calm down the two of you
chrissakes
the Nature article cited
was basically - let us start again from scratch
oo-er Mrs
not sure why this has repopped up on Hiroshima Day

[Atheist]

NJ; I don't think I've ever been a doom-monger. I do think that Brexit and wars might have been detrimental to international scientific co-operation, had scientists been minded to ignore the science and give priority to political thinking, but fortunately they seem not to have been.

[DTCwordfan]

Just bring Gulliver and TTT together and one should have fusion power....

[Atheist]

PP; I don't think that either I or NJ has been guilty of needing to be calmed down. I think we've both been fairly polite and reasonable.

[HeavensToBetsy]

TTT: // No idea of time scale though. //

There are several current fusion initiatives, for example:

STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) is a UK-based and UK-funded project aiming to create a prototype fusion energy plant by 2040: https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/step/
£220m of funding was allocated to this project in 2018 to finance the design. It is still in the design stage, with the design concept due by 2024.

ITER aims to be the first fusion device to create net energy, and has a budget of €22bn (although the USA suggests it will be much more than this). Its goal is to produce sustained energy with a Q (energy input-output ratio) of 10, with DT (Deuterium-Tritium) operation planned to start in 2035.

DEMO is the planned successor to ITER (https://www.euro-fusion.org/programme/demo/) and aims to produce a demonstration fusion power plant by the 2050s.

So, nuclear fusion is not going to be with us any time soon, and certainly not in time to help us reach any net zero targets.

So why bother investing in it? Why not just spend the money on existing forms of energy production?

Whatever one's views on fossil fuels and climate change, it is beyond dispute that sooner or later, fossil fuels will run out. There is never an optimum time to invest in new technologies, especially a technology in its relative infancy such as nuclear fusion, but if we never try, we'll never know. There have already been practical spinoffs from fusion technology, such as the remotely-controlled MASCOT maintenance robot, designed to work in highly radioactive environments and which is now being used to help decommission fission power stations.

JET (the joint European Torus) in Culham has already shown that fusion is possible, producing 59 megajoules for 5 seconds at 0.33Q. The aim now is to increase the Q by 'scaling up' to improve efficiency. Bring it on.

[New Judge]

//PP; I don't think that either I or NJ has been guilty of needing to be calmed down. I think we've both been fairly polite and reasonable.//

Quite agree. Because we have different opinions does not mean we're not calm!. :-)