Nuclear fusion describes the collision and fusion of two or more atomic nuclei into one single nucleus. The resulting nucleus is lighter than the sum of the original nuclei, and the reaction releases energy, as illustrated by Einstein’s equation E=mc
. Fusion energy generation has several advantages compared to
, the process that currently takes place in nuclear reactors: it is intrinsically safe,
- or at least the hydrogen isotope deuterium, used in a reaction with the rare hydrogen isotope tritium - is easily accessible in nature, and the energy output per kilogram of fuel is around four times larger than that of nuclear fission. Furthermore, it does not produce radioactive waste and, just like nuclear fission, does not emit carbon dioxide. However, while fusion power would be a game changer for the global energy industry, harnessing viable electricity from fusion energy is still far off on the horizon.
The challenges of nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion occurs naturally in the core of stars, but reproducing the process in a research facility has its challenges. Nuclear fuel must be kept at elevated temperatures (at least 100 million degrees Celsius) and confined in a small space to force atoms to collide and merge. The scientific community has tried to reach fusion ignition in a controlled environment for almost a century, unsuccessfully...until 2022. A net fusion energy gain of over one megajoule was achieved in December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, United States. The research facility used inertial confinement, heating a deuterium-tritium fuel capsule with 192 high-energy laser beams. However, the energy used to power the laser system was larger than the energy output of the reaction, and the total energy generated was still not enough to power a car, let alone a country. Still, motivated by the recent achievement, public and private
investments in the global fusion industry were growing in 2022. The
target markets for fusion energy were electricity generation and industrial heat production.
Country policies for nuclear fusion
In 2022, most of the
companies in the fusion power industry worldwide were in the U.S., followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. With the Energy Act 2023, the UK passed legislation for the regulation of the fusion industry and put forth the plan for a fusion power plant by 2040. At the end of 2023, the European Parliament included fusion energy among the net-zero technologies in its Net Zero Industry Act. Meanwhile, the EU and Japan jointly started operations of JT-60SA, the largest facility (a superconducting tokamak reactor) where nuclear fusion is attempted through magnetic confinement of hydrogen plasma. China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. were involved in the development of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) reactor in France, which is currently under construction and is projected to be the largest tokamak worldwide.
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