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Humanity has long pursued the dream of nuclear fusion energy. We mastered nuclear fission several decades ago, and nuclear energy has served us well ever since, except for its terrible reputation. When nuclear energy fails, as in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the consequences are very serious.
Despite major accidents, nuclear energy is actually one of the safest energy sources available, along with solar and wind. Nuclear energy causes 99.91% fewer deaths than coal. Oil and gas are almost as dangerous as coal. Nuclear energy, especially modern nuclear power, is far more efficient than any other energy source.
Modern nuclear power is also highly efficient in terms of waste generation. Most of the waste can be recycled, and nuclear power plants produce only 3 cubic meters of waste per year of operation. By comparison, a coal-fired power plant produces 300,000 tons of ash and six million tons of CO2 over the same period.
All this makes nuclear energy sound quite enticing. Now imagine using fusion energy instead of fission. Four times the energy of fission, and the only waste product is helium, which is non-radioactive. Four million times the energy of coal.
You may have heard nuclear fusion described as limitless energy. That's not far from the truth, except for the potential costs associated with it. But if we overcome these obstacles, if we can master nuclear fusion, we will change the world forever. But we don't have that yet.
The design of fusion reactors began as early as 1939, but it's clear that no significant progress has been made. We understand the advantages and the scientific basis, but practical implementation has yet to materialize. We can even create fusion reactions, but we've yet to be able to sustain and utilize them. So will it ever happen? We'll see!
What is Fusion?
Fusion energy, however difficult it may be to create on Earth, is entirely real and plausible. It is what powers the Sun. The high pressure and temperature of the Sun can fuse hydrogen atoms together, producing helium as a byproduct. The energy released in this reaction is what makes the Sun the giant, blazing ball of plasma we see in the sky every day.
Atomic fission, which occurs in modern nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, is a splitting of the atom, not a fusion. In both cases, incredible energy is released because the mass of the resulting nucleus is smaller than the mass of the reacting nuclei.
The Sun will go out one day when it runs out of the fuel it needs to survive, but right now it has enough hydrogen to last another five billion years, so this won't be a big problem for us anytime soon.
For nuclear fusion to work here on Earth, we need a reaction that gives us more energy than we put into it. That's the problem. Starting a nuclear fusion reaction requires a lot of energy. It requires creating a plasma, which is a very hot gas filled with charged particles. Almost every attempt we've made to induce nuclear fusion so far has required more energy to create the pressure and temperature necessary to form the plasma than we could produce in the tiny nuclear fusion reaction that followed. Remember, the Sun is 333,000 times larger than Earth, so the pressure and temperature there (which reach 27 million degrees) are much lower.
Is it even possible to create a thermonuclear generator?
Nuclear fusion is possible on Earth, but it's difficult. The pressure on the Sun is 24.7 million gigapascals. By comparison, scientists once created a pressure of 770 gigapascals in a laboratory, causing an international sensation. This is a fundamental obstacle to making nuclear fusion work as easily here as on the Sun. We can't even come close to creating the same pressure. This means we need to raise the temperature, but this requires much more energy, which destroys the reaction. If the energy required to create nuclear fusion is insufficient to produce the desired result, then it's useless.
Remember how we said the Sun can generate temperatures of up to 27 million degrees? That sounds amazing until you hear what we have to do in laboratories to try to create thermonuclear fusion. On Earth, using lasers to compensate for the lack of pressure, we heat plasma to 100 million degrees.
This process works, and we've successfully used nuclear fusion many times in the laboratory. The problem is that achieving temperatures of 100 million degrees requires more energy than nuclear fusion can produce. It's also safe to say that once nuclear fusion is developed to a feasible level, it will initially be extremely expensive. This creates a serious obstacle to the dream of unlimited energy resources.
There are currently about 20 fusion reactors worldwide working to create a sustainable fusion reaction that doesn't require more energy than it produces. In 2022, scientists achieved this for the first time. They used two megajoules of energy to power 200 lasers focused on a single fuel capsule. The fusion reaction began and produced 3.15 megajoules of energy. This is a small but successful reaction. It was repeated three more times, once producing 3.88 megajoules, proving that this was no fluke.
Also in 2022, a laboratory in China broke the record for the longest sustained reaction, achieving a reaction lasting 17 minutes at a temperature of 126 million degrees Celsius. Later, a laboratory in the UK produced 59 megajoules of sustained energy, doubling the previous record. In 2024, 69 megajoules were produced. In practice, this isn't much, enough for only four hot baths. Several plans exist to create working fusion generators by 2030.
For this to become viable, production scale must be significantly increased. Providing cities with electricity requires generating much more energy. But the prospects are there, and this is expected to happen soon.
Why do we want this so much?
It's no wonder that nuclear fusion is called a potentially limitless source of energy. It runs on hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.
Suppose we had a facility, a kind of fusion reactor, that was stable and reliable and produced highly efficient fusion energy. One gallon of seawater would be enough to produce the energy equivalent to 300 gallons of gasoline. There would be no need for coal, which produces dirty smoke, or uranium, which emits radiation. Just clean, affordable fuel and no dangerous byproducts.
Solar and wind energy also boast clean energy production, but they cannot operate on the scale of nuclear fusion. Wind and solar energy require much more infrastructure, such as solar panels and windmills. Both solar and wind energy are dependent on the weather, which is not the case with nuclear fusion.
The main advantage of using fusion energy is its impact on climate. Fusion energy effectively eliminates the environmental pollution caused by modern energy sources, particularly fossil fuels. We could eliminate the production of many dangerous emissions. The climate crisis could potentially be solved with fusion energy. Companies investing in fusion energy predict that we can achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The fact that nuclear fusion is far more energy-efficient than any existing energy production method is also a major advantage. Energy production is four million times more efficient than a coal-fired power plant, making even considering the use of coal impractical.
Although fission energy is the best currently available option, fusion is significantly superior not only in terms of energy production but also in terms of safety. The biggest drawbacks of nuclear power plants today are the risk of accidents and the waste problem. Fusion reactors eliminate both of these concerns. There is no hazardous waste, and accidents at the plant are impossible.
Fusion power plants use incredibly small amounts of fuel; the amount of deuterium or tritium used is about the size of a postage stamp. If something were to happen, the reaction wouldn't get out of control and cause a core meltdown; it would simply burn itself out and stop.
Another important point: since these reactors use hydrogen, a significant portion of geopolitical tensions could be reduced. Imagine if wars over oil were no longer fought because no one needed it. The potential for new dynamics on a global scale is quite real. At the same time, the potential economic impact on various regions of the world cannot be ignored.
What is the danger of thermonuclear energy?
While this poses no danger, a potential downside of fusion energy in the early stages of its development will likely be cost. Anything new is expensive, be it a new car, a new game console, or a new energy source. Traditional energy sources will simply become cheaper. This is why we still burn coal and gasoline and use nuclear power plants. The infrastructure exists, the energy production method is simple to understand, and consumers are accustomed to paying a certain price for it.
The cost of nuclear fusion is projected to be around $80-$100 per MWh at 2020 prices. However, a more realistic scenario is that costs will be significantly higher, up to $150 per MWh. This figure will rise as inflation increases. However, this is only realistic in a world where nuclear fusion becomes the norm. Initially, Princeton researchers projected that capital costs for nuclear fusion could reach $7,000 per kW.
In 2021, the US Department of Energy estimated that the ITER international fusion research project, which is building tokamaks to study and produce fusion energy, had already cost $65 billion. The initial budget was planned at $5 billion. In other words, no one yet knows the exact cost of fusion, but it will likely be higher than we think.
In terms of practical hazards, fusion reactors may not work as commonly believed. The sun fuses hydrogen, but on Earth, we are considering using deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, as they are more reactive than hydrogen. Tritium is not found in nature. It is radioactive and a byproduct of fission. A fusion reaction can eventually produce its own tritium, but it must be supplied in large quantities first. The cost of one gram is approximately $30,000.
Fusion using these isotopes creates neutron fluxes, which are radioactive and can produce weapons-grade plutonium. Therefore, the "zero waste" advantage is technically untrue when applied to how we conduct fusion on Earth. However, proponents point out that tritium has a very short half-life, and only negligible quantities are required in fusion plants. This could still provide relative safety. As for the neutron fluxes, the solution for shielding and protecting against them remains to be determined, but it is possible.
Another drawback, returning to the energy question, is that the claim of net energy gain is perhaps somewhat ambiguous. The 2022 fusion breakthrough report failed to mention that the lab used 300 megajoules of energy to charge the lasers before firing them, yielding three megajoules of fusion energy. They focused only on the energy released during the actual firing, which was less than the energy produced.
As for the role of world savior, there's also the issue of timeliness. If we're to save the world from the climate crisis, the UN says we must achieve carbon neutrality worldwide by 2050. Despite companies' promises, it seems unlikely that nuclear fusion can be scaled up that quickly. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be developed, but claiming it will solve a problem that will be too late to fix is disingenuous.
It's also worth noting that information about the power a fusion generator can produce is often obscured by vague language. The ITER facility in France is claimed to be capable of producing 500 megawatts of power with a power consumption of only 50 megawatts. This sounds like a good compromise, but 500 megawatts is not electrical power, but the energy of fusion in the form of neutrons and alpha particles. And 50 megawatts is not the electrical power consumed, but only thermal energy. The facility consumes much more electricity, approximately 300–400 megawatts. Therefore, the claimed efficiency has not yet been achieved, and PR and marketing distort the truth.
The Sun and other stars in space undoubtedly prove that fusion energy is an amazing source of energy. Whether humanity will ever succeed in harnessing it, and harnessing it in a way that will justify the time and effort expended, we won't know for at least a few years.
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