Last week in the US, the most important discovery of recent years was announced: Fusion Energy. Fusion technology, which is still in its infancy, may be the energy source of the future… But as the threat of global warming continues, can fusion energy be a solution?
In the movie Back to the Future, when Dr. Emmit Brown arrives from the future on October 26, 1985 to take Marty and Jennifer to October 21, 2015, he fills the Delorean with garbage waste as fuel. Meanwhile, the inscription on the Delorean appears on the screen: “Mr. Fusion”. Now, 7 years after the date in the movie, fusion energy is coming back into our lives.
In an experiment conducted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, more energy was extracted from fusion reactions than was used to start the process. The experiment was the first of its kind in any laboratory anywhere in the world, and the discovery was described as “groundbreaking”.
This major achievement, which is still in its infancy, could, when it becomes available, produce virtually unlimited carbon-free energy to meet humanity’s energy needs without raising global temperatures or worsening climate change.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Philippe Larochelle of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the company that first announced the success of fusion, expressed his hopes for the process:
“In the next 10 or 20 years, we will build the first commercial fusion reactor, and then people will spend the next decades building better fusion reactors because fusion is really an incredible source of energy. The fuel is infinite, carbon-free and extremely cheap. You can build it anywhere and scale it infinitely…”
PROFIT AND LOSS RELATIONSHIP
To extract the fusion energy, 192 laser beams fire synchronously at a golden cylinder about 1 centimeter in size, containing frozen hydrogen atoms. Within seconds, the temperature of the hydrogen exceeds that of the sun’s core (15.6 million degrees) and the 2.05 megajoules (about 0.5 kWh) of energy reaches 3.14 megajoules (about 0.8 kWh). This is enough energy to light a light bulb for about 8 hours. However, 300 megajoules of energy (the energy consumption of a house for 3 days) is needed to carry out this experiment.
While aiming 192 laser beams at a single point would require a large power plant, the cost of creating point-sized solar particles has so far been billions of dollars. More resources are needed to make this energy usable.
WILL THERE BE A SOLUTION AS THE WORLD WARMS?
The Paris Climate Agreement is the first multinational agreement signed in 2016 to guide the world in the transition to clean energy. The agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, while aiming for zero emissions.
Researchers say fusion energy could “one day” provide clean, safe electricity without greenhouse gas emissions. Tony Roulstone, a nuclear engineer at Cambridge University who analyzes the economics of fusion power, says that unless there is a bigger breakthrough, fusion is unlikely to play a significant role in power generation before the 2060s or 2070s.
“We already have the technologies we need to decarbonize 80 percent of the electricity sector by 2030,” says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.
According to an article in the New York Times, however, some experts believe that fusion energy will not help achieve this goal. Climate scientists therefore aim to get more energy from solar and wind power.
EVEN THE LIGHT BULB TOOK 100 YEARS…
Although Humphry Davy discovered the light bulb in 1817, development work continued until Thomas Edison’s long-lasting light bulb in 1880. It was not until the 1900s that the light bulb was widely used.
A period of almost 100 years… Perhaps such a period of time is needed for fusion energy, but not for climate change and the environment.
