Can This $22 Billion Megaproject Make Nuclear Fusion Power A Reality?

Fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars, and scientists are getting a lot closer to replicating it here on Earth. ITER, the $22 billion dollar international fusion megaproject in the south of France, is the most well-funded endeavor, paid for by the governments of its member nations. But VC’s and private investors are also pouring money into fusion start-ups, with hopes to commercialize fusion power within the next decade. With a number of breakthroughs already this year, the race is on to prove that fusion power is not only possible, but integral to a clean energy future.

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Can This $22 Billion Megaproject Make Nuclear Fusion Power A Reality?

[raunakshahi]

I'm so glad that the question about fusion energy is moving towards when and how, instead of if, this could solve a lot of problems for us

[MGZetta]

Mastering fusion energy is so hard that you would be more than happy if your competition won the race.

[JeffRyman]

I took my first nuclear engineering class in 1966. At that time, we were told that "fusion is just X years away, " where X was some number in the range 15 to 50, the exact value depended on who was talking. The same statements are being made today in 2021. I hope it works, but magnetic confinement of plasma is a very difficult problem to solve.

[pieterveenders]

Considering the potential of fusion power, those costs of 20 billion Euro seem like a pretty okey deal. I realise that ITER is only an experiment and not the final step in the testing or development of fusion, but still. Let's hope it won't be too long before fusion becomes applicable!

[josemarirobledo]

im just so proud of all the scientist especially the old ones who are spending their time not for the money but for the future of their children, planting a tree on which shade their not gonna sit

[Joe-ijof]

There's a key detail to add to this report... SPARC and other newer projects were built around new superconductors that only need liquid nitrogen to maintain superconductivity rather than much colder liquid helium. ITER, unfortunately, was too far along in the development process to redesign around high temperature super conductors. SPARC is running MUCH higher power through the HTSCs generating a denser, tighter magnetic field, drastically shrinking the size of the machine by around a factor of 10. This is how they're moving fast.

[anshunayyar]

This is a great example of what we all as Human Beings can do instead of finding small small differences and fighting over them.

[nolimitscoasterguy]

It warms my heart that the world is uniting together for a common cause, some enemies and friends coming together is truly amazing

[DeathDefiant]

"We know that when we build it, it will work. We just don't know exactly how... So theres alot of science to be done." This sounds like it should be an Aperture Science quote from Portal lol

[joannmay-anthony]

I am so relieved that this is all happening. At 69, I will probably be dead when net energy is produced but it does give me hope for the future. We need nuclear now.

[parthaable]

Once we achieve this feat, we can dream to become a type 1 civilization, to harness the power hidden in solar system, in an efficient and proper way. Also, the negativities and sabotages would be worse than horror stories.

[Damage]

i never thought this idea would come to fruition in my lifetime and im only 26 but this video gives me hope. Great job CNBC!

[robabiera]

Kudos for acknowledging that raising living standards requires energy and that wind and solar are not going to cut it because they're not "always on".

[Aryan_]

Fusion Tech, Quantum computers, Graphene are all the next gen tech

[NightInBh]

US: We are willing to spend 2 trillion on a war to accumulate oil that our dollar is based on
Also US: But you're telling me I have to spend 30 billion on nerds in lab coats? Yikes

[avnishkumar]

Scientist : "It's going to take decades to build this"
Obadiah: "Tony stark was able to build this in a cave!!! With a box of scraps!!!"

[williamsmith]

There's a couple misstatements in this video:

1) Fusion produces 4X the amount of energy as fission and 4, 000, 000X that of fossil fuels. This is true, but you're not getting all of that energy out of the reactor, as it cost a lot of energy to maintain the reactor. Currently, we're just trying to get as much energy out of the reactor as what we put in, but, hopefully, in the next decade or two, we'll probably break through and actually achieve energy gain. Let's assume we make some massive breakthroughs in super conductors in the next decade or two so that we not only achieve energy gain from fusion, like getting out 25% more power than what we put into the reactor, but we will be able to generate 2X the amount of power we put into the reactor. That means your reactor requires you dump 50% of the power that it produces right back into the reactor just to maintain fusion. So, under this OPTOMISTIC scenario, your fusion reactor is really only generating 2X the amount of power you'd get from fission and 2, 000, 000X what you get from fossil fuels, and that's after a couple more decades of major technological breakthroughs. Fission reactors, on the other hand, already exist and are already able to produce 1, 000, 000X the amount of power you'd get from fossil Also, with a fission reactor, you don't have to dump any power back into the reactor to maintain the reactor. You just add fuel.

2) The fuel used by these reactors is plentiful. Fusion advocates like to talk about how, compared to fission reactors, the fuel used by fusion reactors is much more plentiful, as it's "just hydrogen". That's not exactly the case though. Almost every fusion reactor currently being worked on right now and planned for in the near future will use deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium isn't nearly as common as simple hydrogen, but it's still common enough that it's still way more common than fission fuels. Tritium, on the other hand, doesn't exist naturally, but must be produced by "fissioning" lithium atoms. Lithium is a little more than 2X as common as thorium, the ideal fuel material for one of the best potential fission reactors, LFTR's. HOWEVER, you don't get tritium from common lithium, but primarily from an isotope of it, Li-6, which only makes up ~7.5% of natural lithium. This is where things flip around though, as Thorium is 6.4X as common as Li-6. As such, fusion fuel is actually less abundant than fission fuels.

3) Unlike fission reactors, fusion reactors don't produce long lived radioactive waste. Contrary to what the video states, there are actually several Gen 4 reactor designs, such as LFTR, that don't produce long lived radioactive waste either, as those long-lived wastes are chiefly the transuranics which largely aren't produced by LFTR's and would be consumed in other types of fast reactors. So the wastes produced by reactors such as LFTR's would be short lived radioactive waste. Fusion reactors also produce short-lived radioactive waste as H-2 + H-3 fusion produces hell'a lots of free neutrons which will be slamming into the reactor vessel and surrounding materials, converting many of those materials into radioactive isotopes.

4) Fusion reactors can't melt down. Neither can fission reactors like LFTR's, which are liquids to start.

[zlamanit]

3:09 that's incorrect - the 50 MW quoted only includes energy that goes into the plasma and not what's used for the whole system, the 500 MW produced is the plasma emergy, not what can be used to produce electricity. Overall the power output will be only about 75% of what is used and that's only for 8 minutes of operation.

But that's fine because the production of net electricity was never a goal - ITER is a testing and development platform for the next reactor DEMO.

[SuyashSharma]

I have been following this project from such a long time thk u CNBC for covering it

[mattg]

Ah yes, nuclear fusion.

The technology that has been 5 years away for 30 years