#17. Newclear energy

February 21, 2022

In November, a group in Korea heated plasma to 100 million degrees celsius (6.5x hotter than the sun) and maintained it for 30 seconds. Two months later, a group in China heated plasma to 70 million degrees celsius (5x hotter than the sun) and maintained it for 17 minutes. Who cares? These are the precursors to limitless energy thanks to nuclear fusion.

Stepping back, what is nuclear fusion? It’s the way energy is made in the sun (and all stars). Hydrogen nuclei shoot around the molecule at such a high energy that they slam together with incredible force and fuse into heavier helium, releasing energy in the process (I’ll take my PhD now).

Nuclear energy isn’t new to us apes. It’s existed before and previous iterations are a large cause of fear for nuclear today. Nobody wants another Fukushima. But that is nuclear fission not fusion. Fission is where we take elements like the notorious plutonium or uranium and break them apart, releasing energy in the process. The byproduct of fission is the also notorious radioactive waste.

Nuclear fission

So this plasma that South Korea and China have created is built to mimic the environment inside of stars where fusion takes place. If we can generate fusion energy via plasma, the energy output of the plasma will be greater than the energy input required to heat it. In other words, literal limitless energy. And this isn’t just a science project. Companies like Commonwealth Fusion (just raised $1.8b), Helion ($577m raised), and General Fusion ($412m raised) are all working on this. The Joint European Torus recently demonstrated energy output from their plasma fusion system of 59 mW. That’s not global scale but it’s enough to power about 10,000 homes for a year, so it’s also not small potatoes. Radiant is a relative newcomer to the field but is aiming to build small modular reactors (SMR)

So who is this plasma anyway? That’s the fun part. It’s water. It’s water spun until it is so dense and becomes an ionized state similar to gas. So how much water are we talking about here? Water is precious too. I’m glad you asked because this part’s also fun. The total annual production of energy on earth today could be produced by a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft cube of water. That’s not even enough water to fill most above ground pools.

Nuclear fusion

And so what about the Fukushimas? Are we risking that again? Well, first thing’s first: nuclear energy causes only 0.07 deaths per terawatt hour. That’s compared to 2.82 (40x higher) of natural gas and 18.4 (262x higher) of oil. But moving that aside, no, we are not risking another Fukushima. When a fission reactor breaks down, you get a nuclear meltdown a la Fukushima. If a fusion reactor encounters any point of failure, the plasma, by nature, loses its energy almost immediately. So the reactions just…stop. We won’t be turning that water into plasma, but nothing else will happen. There are no radioactive elements involved at all.

So this is going to be amazing, but don’t start leaving all your lights on yet. The ICARE system (a consortium of 35+ nations) is on plan for a 500 mW demonstration in 2027. So it’s going to be a few years, but you better buckle up because new nuclear going to be sahweeet.