Despite its theoretical promise of “endless energy” by producing electricity from fusing hydrogen atoms, after some 70 years of failure, dead ends, and outright fraud, fusion remains far too expensive to offer a reasonable approach to generating power. That’s the view of two long time observers and participants in fusion energy research, who write in the May 12 edition of RealClear Energy.
Robert Hirsch, a long-time conventional fusion critic who once ran the federal government’s fusion research program, and Roget Bezdek, a Washington veteran of fusion politics and founder of an economic research firm, MISI, where both he and Hirsh now work, argue that fusion, as currently conceived, it at least 10 time more expansive than conventional nuclear fission, and perhaps 30 times more expensive.
“The U.S. and world fusion energy research programs are developing something that no one will want or can afford. The stated goal of fusion energy research is to provide a new source of electric power based on nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun and the stars. That has proven to be an extremely difficult task because the related physics is extremely difficult. In the 1970s, the Russian tokamak fusion configuration emerged as having great promise for creating and containing the extremely hot gas, known as plasma.”
Today, much of the developed world is working on a giant tokomak project in France, the “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor,” (ITER is “the way” in Latin). The goal is a reactor that produces ten times more energy than required to produce the plasma. When originally conceived in 1985, according to Hirsch and Bezdek, ITER was “envisioned to cost roughly $5 billion, a level that might extrapolate to a reasonably priced tokamak fusion power plant.”
But since then, as work has proceeded over 35 years, with marginal success at best, the cost estimates have skyrocketed. Now, the ITER managers say the cost of the first, and not useful for power production, demonstration will run to $22 billion, a cost difficult to verify. Hirsch and Bezdek say, “The U.S. Department of Energy, which is supposed to be paying 9% of total ITER costs, has estimated that actual ITER costs are much higher, roughly $65 billion.”
Even at $22 billion, they argue that “the resulting cost of a power plant based on ITER would be approximately ten times the cost of a nuclear fission power plant, and nuclear fission power plants are considered to be too expensive for further adoption in the U.S. If the ITER cost $65 billion, the resulting cost of a power plant based on ITER would be nearly 30 times more expensive than the cost of a nuclear fission power plant.”
What’s worse, the most likely way to fuse hydrogen atoms requires lots of tritium, a hydrogen isotope that doesn’t exist in nature and must be man-made, mostly in Canadian heavy-water reactors, not common around the world. Hirsch has previously flagged tritium as a major bottleneck for tokomak technology.
Is fusion a complete dead end? Hirsch and Bezdek say there are approaches that might work, “because there are a number of other fusion fuel cycles that could be economically and environmentally attractive. The fuel for these cycles is in huge supply, but the physics is much more difficult. Some physicists shy away from even thinking about the related physics challenges. We will not know if one of these fuel cycles could prove viable unless we try. Right now, government support for these higher fuel cycles worldwide is trivial.
“We continue to have hope for practical, acceptable, environmentally attractive fusion power. However, without sharp focus, capable management, and careful, independent oversight it will not happen. Change in fusion research will be jolting. It will also take considerable political courage.”
–Kennedy Maize