Nuclear fusion seems hot right now – but how close is fusion power?

Canada’s General Fusion and China’s East reactor produce nuclear fusion milestones There is talk of this potentially unlimited, clean energy source becoming a reality amid increasing electricity demand from AI and electrification. Meanwhile, new fusion startups are emerging around the world and have attracted billions in private investment.

Here’s a closer look at nuclear fusion and where its development in Canada and the world.

What is nuclear fusion?

Nuclear fusion has been researched for decades as a way to generate clean, safe, unlimited energy from an abundant source.

Fusion occurs when the nuclei at the centers of two atoms combine into a single nucleus, creating a heavier element and releasing a huge amount of energy. The combination of hydrogen nuclei into helium provides power to our Sun. The same reaction can be used in reactors on Earth.

The fuel for that reaction, hydrogen, is widely available in water on Earth. And unlike reactions in conventional nuclear reactors, which split atoms of radioactive elements such as uranium, fusion reactions do not produce radioactive waste. But commercial nuclear fusion reactors are not yet available.

Why is nuclear fusion in news these days?

China’s EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) fusion reactor recently reached an important milestone. Fusion reactors require hydrogen to be extremely hot and condensed into plasma, as it is found in the Sun. The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced earlier this month that East kept the plasma stable at a density higher than the previous limit. This may make it possible to produce smaller, cheaper commercial fusion reactors in the future, nature report.

University of Alberta professor Robert Fedoszew, who has been involved in laser fusion research for more than 50 years, said those results were predicted years ago, although actually doing it “is a step forward.”

A November 2024 announcement Also from General Fusion, based in Richmond, BC reemerged in the news This month, what has been described as a “world record” in the production of neutrons – the byproducts that show how much fusion took place.

Fedoszev said the record applies only to General Fusion’s own technology – some government-funded fusion reactors have done orders of magnitude more fusion with other technologies. However, he said, General Fusion is “far ahead of most (fusion) startups that have not produced any neutrons at all.”

Both recent developments are important, but incremental, said Blair Bromley, former co-chair of the Canadian Nuclear Society’s Fusion Energy and Accelerator Science and Technology Division.

In other Canadian fusion news, A new center for fusion energy in Ontario Was announced less than two months ago. It will be established with $33 million from the federal government and Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., $19.5 million from the Ontario government and Crown corporation Ontario Power Generation, and $39 million from fusion startup Stellarx Group Ltd. Stellarex says The mission of the center will include the design, construction, and operation of a demonstration reactorBut no deadline has been given.

Why has global interest in fusion been increasing recently?

Andrew Holland is the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association (FIA), a global organization that says it represents all of the world’s major private fusion companies outside China.

Hollande said investors around the world are thinking about climate change and energy security amid rising energy demand from data centers and AI: “Ideally, we need a lot of carbon-free, always-available energy. Fusion could solve that.”

Meanwhile, “the science has progressed to the point where … companies are confident that the next machine they build will work,” he said.

The industry group was established in 2021 with 24 member companies. Over the past five years, the number of fusion companies has more than doubled to 53, and more than US$10 billion has been invested in private fusion startups.

Investors include Tech companies Microsoft and Google, billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and oil company Chevron.

The FIA ​​says most of its members expect to see fusion generating electricity for the grid in the 2030s.

This sounds optimistic. How close are we really?

One challenge for fusion is the large amount of energy that needs to be expended to even start the reaction.

three years ago, a fusion reaction At the National Ignition Facility of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US you generated slightly more energy than was applied. This was the first time (and so far the only time) a fusion reaction produced net energy.

“There has really been increased awareness and, I think, increased optimism,” Fedoszew said.

But it is not enough to put out a little more energy than was put in. In a power plant this ratio should be very high.

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), is a massive fusion reactor being built in France with cooperation from China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States at an estimated cost of 13 billion euros ($21 billion Cdn). It will use 50 MW of electricity to generate 500 MW of fusion power – about 10 times better than LLNL.And enough to power about 250,000 homes – and will become operational in late 2030.

Fedoszev said scientists are confident that such a large fusion reactor would be able to do this.

But other challenges remain before we have an operational fusion power plant.

extreme heat and The radiation generated from the fusion reactions damages the reactor, limiting its operational lifetime to about “less than an hour of total operating time,” Fedoszev said, although this would be divided into a dozen runs of a few hundred seconds each. EIts expansion will require some engineering and solutions like new materials.

Canada’s role in promoting fusion

Other than thisFor challenges with n outputs, nO has yet created a self-sufficient fuel system.

Today’s fusion reactors rely on the combination of two different types of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium.

Deuterium is found naturally in water, but tritium is created using neutrons and lithium. In the future, engineers aim to create a system that feeds neutrons produced by fusion reactions into a “breeder” container of lithium that will generate more tritium, but this does not yet exist.

Meanwhile, tritium needs to be made somewhere else and put into the reactor.

Most of the world’s commercial tritium is currently produced by Ontario’s CANDU nuclear reactors.

Canada supplies Tritium and tritium-related equipment and technology to ITER, and it will supply tritium United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority For nuclear fusion.

need to reduce costs

While huge reactors like ITER may be capable of generating fusion energy, they are extremely expensive. Bromley said the question now is whether commercial fusion reactors can become economically competitive with other zero-carbon sources of electricity.. Fusion aims to compete with more sustained “baseload” sources such as conventional nuclear and hydroelectric power. Meanwhile, solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels.

That’s why fusion startups are trying to find ways to build smaller, cheaper reactors using new technologies like high-temperature superconducting magnets.

Bromley says the science is at the point that private industry can work in parallel with governments on many practical technological and engineering challenges.

“A lot of people in the private sector have thought, you know, this is a problem, this is an opportunity to make a profit and solve a problem the world needs,” he said.

Holland says he believes we are now very close to fusion reactors, so industry needs to build supply chains and governments need to create public policy and regulations to support them.

“We have to start making people aware that this is coming,” he said. “We have to make sure that people know and understand how exciting it is so that they actually want to build this thing in their communities.”