More than 50 teams worldwide are racing to develop fusion power - international and national programs, huge engineering companies, and over $6 billion invested in startups. Fools gold or gold mine?
Would you opine as to the possible cost per kWh of fusion-generated energy in 2050 or beyond? I can't imagine either fusion or SNRs in 2050 being price-competitive with wind/solar/batteries and other technologies that will have moved another quarter century down the learning curve. I agree with you that the spinoff technologies, not the product, will be the legacy of fusion and SNRs The military, where cost is not a show stopper, may find some applications.
I think it's way too early to guess the LCOE of fusion in 2050. The reason I like Helion is it eliminates the need for a thermal generation stage, which cuts out a chunk of cost and eliminates the exergy-destruction of going to heat (i.e. inherrently efficient). But I have no idea what it might need in terms of special materials, how long it can last between rebuilds, how cheap its fuel can be, whether it can produce continuous power or only pulsed, how many supercapacitors it might need, etc, etc, etc, etc.
In general, when you know they are still in the lab looking for materials to line the walls of plasma reaction vessels, and talking about coating things with diamond etc, I think we know this is not going to be cheap.
Thanks, Michael. Think you nailed it. About half way down I was thinking "yeah, but it's still worth building things for future energy abundance", until you brought it back that way. With fission, it has yet to be evidenced that a venture return is possible (Oklo might be the first), but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. The momentum swinging back behind nuclear is such that it feels we are on the cusp of someone breaking ranks and actually coming out with firm contracts in the next 12-18 months, moving us out of "MoU Land". It will probably take the full 10 year fund lifetime (maybe plus the 2 year extensions) to realise it, but the shift in prospective outcomes could be rapid. Also, agree with you that it definitely is not an area for tourists.
- a recent Australian report on whether new fission generation would make sense here speculated that investor interest in fusion might draw off the funds otherwise available for SMR development. Do you find that plausible?
- one of the silliest things about the alternate-history space drama TV show For All Mankind (which I love) is that fusion power goes from a startup breakthrough in the late 80s to halting global warming and driving helium-3 mining on the moon (itself very dumb) by the mid 90s. Lots of people have no sense of what change and development takes (and how remarkable relatively rapidly-propagating techs are)!
I don't really think we are capital-constrained. In fact the opposite - often it is the race between technologies, or between great powers, that kicks off an investment frenzy. If anything, the interest in fusion increases the likelihood of money going into nuclear. Including, for instance, the investment thesis I outlined in the piece: lots of the underlying science and supply chain is shared between fusion and fission, so money going into one helps the other.
As for the speed with which things can reach scale, I am afraid I am with Vaclav Smil on this. It takes decades to get all the pieces to line up.
The thing that I can’t wrap my head around with fusion is that it seems to have an inescapable capital efficiency conundrum: in order to generate the laser pulse that initiates the fusion reaction you need to inject a lot of electricity into your machine. If you want to avoid burning fossils to provide this initial electricity input, you need a dedicated nuclear fission plant, or a huge amount of batteries to provide a non-intermittent power source. But if you already have the fission plants or the batteries, you’ve accomplished your goal of procuring clean electricity! why would you then go to the trouble of then running that energy through a hugely expensive and risky additional process?
Would you opine as to the possible cost per kWh of fusion-generated energy in 2050 or beyond? I can't imagine either fusion or SNRs in 2050 being price-competitive with wind/solar/batteries and other technologies that will have moved another quarter century down the learning curve. I agree with you that the spinoff technologies, not the product, will be the legacy of fusion and SNRs The military, where cost is not a show stopper, may find some applications.
I think it's way too early to guess the LCOE of fusion in 2050. The reason I like Helion is it eliminates the need for a thermal generation stage, which cuts out a chunk of cost and eliminates the exergy-destruction of going to heat (i.e. inherrently efficient). But I have no idea what it might need in terms of special materials, how long it can last between rebuilds, how cheap its fuel can be, whether it can produce continuous power or only pulsed, how many supercapacitors it might need, etc, etc, etc, etc.
In general, when you know they are still in the lab looking for materials to line the walls of plasma reaction vessels, and talking about coating things with diamond etc, I think we know this is not going to be cheap.
Thanks, Michael. Think you nailed it. About half way down I was thinking "yeah, but it's still worth building things for future energy abundance", until you brought it back that way. With fission, it has yet to be evidenced that a venture return is possible (Oklo might be the first), but that doesn't mean that it won't happen. The momentum swinging back behind nuclear is such that it feels we are on the cusp of someone breaking ranks and actually coming out with firm contracts in the next 12-18 months, moving us out of "MoU Land". It will probably take the full 10 year fund lifetime (maybe plus the 2 year extensions) to realise it, but the shift in prospective outcomes could be rapid. Also, agree with you that it definitely is not an area for tourists.
Loved this!
Two thoughts:
- a recent Australian report on whether new fission generation would make sense here speculated that investor interest in fusion might draw off the funds otherwise available for SMR development. Do you find that plausible?
- one of the silliest things about the alternate-history space drama TV show For All Mankind (which I love) is that fusion power goes from a startup breakthrough in the late 80s to halting global warming and driving helium-3 mining on the moon (itself very dumb) by the mid 90s. Lots of people have no sense of what change and development takes (and how remarkable relatively rapidly-propagating techs are)!
I don't really think we are capital-constrained. In fact the opposite - often it is the race between technologies, or between great powers, that kicks off an investment frenzy. If anything, the interest in fusion increases the likelihood of money going into nuclear. Including, for instance, the investment thesis I outlined in the piece: lots of the underlying science and supply chain is shared between fusion and fission, so money going into one helps the other.
As for the speed with which things can reach scale, I am afraid I am with Vaclav Smil on this. It takes decades to get all the pieces to line up.
The thing that I can’t wrap my head around with fusion is that it seems to have an inescapable capital efficiency conundrum: in order to generate the laser pulse that initiates the fusion reaction you need to inject a lot of electricity into your machine. If you want to avoid burning fossils to provide this initial electricity input, you need a dedicated nuclear fission plant, or a huge amount of batteries to provide a non-intermittent power source. But if you already have the fission plants or the batteries, you’ve accomplished your goal of procuring clean electricity! why would you then go to the trouble of then running that energy through a hugely expensive and risky additional process?