As we enter the ‘third era’ of nuclear fusion research we are set to take a ‘giant leap’ towards an inexhaustible source of clean energy, says Alain Bécoulet.
The problem with nuclear fusion, he says, is not so much the scientific or technological difficulties associated with making it happen. It’s more that the finishing line is simply so far away in the distant future that the idea of all this cheap clean energy seems more like science fiction than scientific reality.
“Neither governments nor the public have the attention span to deal with long-term projects. People are only interested in time-to-market of three or four years,” Bécoulet explains. “You can develop washing machines or telephones on that sort of basis. But you can’t develop a nuclear reactor in that time,” he says referring to his work at ITER. “It’s as simple as that. There are still some big adventures happening, such as the exploration of Mars. Research into nuclear fusion energy is an adventure on that scale, but to succeed in this sort of project you need to stick to a long-term plan.”
Bécoulet is chief engineer at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a global nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject with the mission of replicating the fusion processes of the sun to create energy here on Earth. The reactor, which is based in the south of France at Cadarache has been variously described as the most expensive science experiment of all time, the most complicated engineering project in human history and one of the most ambitious human collaborations since the development of the International Space Station.
‘Star Power’
Imagine a world where there is a clean, cheap and inexhaustible source of energy. That world isn’t one of science fiction, but of nuclear fusion. For decades, fusion has been marginalised as a fringe area of scientific research. But as we enter what Alain Bécoulet describes in Star Power as the ‘third era’ of fusion energy, we are seeing the ITER project taking a ‘giant step’ in the development of a new type of power. Chief engineer at ITER, Bécoulet explains how nuclear fusion – the process that makes stars shine – could be domesticated for commercial energy production, giving the world limitless power without depleting natural resources or damaging the environment. In this indispensable primer on the topic, Bécoulet examines the history of fusion energy, explains the science and technology, as well as describing today’s massive scientific effort to bring fusion closer to commercial reality.
Clearly, it’s big news and yet, as Bécoulet explains, most people don’t know the difference between nuclear fission and fusion. For the record, the fission process is currently being used to produce electricity in power plants in more than 400 operating reactors worldwide, while fusion is still very much at the research stage. “They are both nuclear reaction processes,” says Bécoulet, “but they are different on several specific levels” – which are covered in the first third of his book. The key points, he says, are that fusion is “intrinsically safe because it is not a chain reaction. It is also a very powerful reaction – even more so than fission. But there is no nuclear waste produced by the reaction. There are no waste products that need to be processed or buried 500 metres below the surface of the earth.”
Bécoulet goes on to say that the industries required to extract these elements don’t exist yet and they will come at an environmental cost. But given that these materials are conspicuously abundant, and crucially, evenly distributed globally, with reserves lasting for tens of thousands of years (if not indefinitely), these costs are worth absorbing somehow. And because the elements are plentiful in contrast to fossil fuels, fusion power won’t bring with it the geostrategic tensions associated with oil and gas. As Bécoulet writes in ‘Star Power’, this new energy sector, “promises the immense merit of quasi-universal access to the necessary resources.”
This is the point at which ‘Star Power’ changes in tone, from the blissful optimism of solving the world’s mounting energy crises to explaining how the process of producing the energy is “tremendously difficult. We know it works because it happens on every star. But there are huge technological challenges,” which are outlined in the middle section of the book. The good news is that these challenges are being overcome: “if you draw a graph of the progress of fusion power versus time, you go faster than the famous Moore’s Law in electronics. But we started from zero and there is still a long way to go.”
Where we are today, says Bécoulet, is at the start of what he calls the ‘third era’ of nuclear fusion research, a field in which eras last for roughly a quarter of a century. The first, “was really when we had the idea that this could work, when we spent 25 years making a magnetic confinement configuration,” which culminated with the design of the tokamak, an experimental machine designed to harness fusion energy.
The second era was when “we made the engineering laws of fusion, the research and development phase, the moment we said: ‘Okay it’s feasible’, when ITER came into existence.” The third era, “where we are today, is when we are assembling the technology and the science, putting it all in once device and working on optimising it.” The official forecast for when there will be the first reactor producing power is 2050, but there are commercial organisations that think it will be sooner.
At the end of our time, I ask Bécoulet if he is confident that the day will arrive when electricity derived from nuclear fusion will be part of our day-to-day energy mix. His response is elliptic in that he is happy to state his confidence in making the technology work, “but after that it is out of the hands of the scientists and engineers. We are enabling a new source of energy. But if you are asking if we will use it commercially, I can’t answer that. I don’t have a crystal ball.”
Source: E&T
