For the first time, US scientists have achieved a fusion reaction with net energy gain. But the dream of limitless zero-carbon energy is still a long way from reality. The FT's Simon Mundy meets scientists and investors in the UK, France and US, to see how close we really are to commercial fusion power
Produced filmed and edited by Petros Gioumpasis. Reported by Simon Mundy. Additional footage by ITER, NASA, Tokamak Energy Getty, Reuters, BVE, CFS. Graphics by Rory Griffiths, Ian Bott and Russell Birkett. Post production by CodaAll the stars that shine at night are driven by fusion energy. It's what powers the universe.
The idea when it was formed was to bring cultures and nations that have been, in the past, sometimes at odds with each other together. In fact, it was born between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev. And then more parties, more members joined. So it is a place of peace in some sense. This being said, of course, there is also some complexity coming with an international collaboration with having, say, some degree of politics associated, OK, some compromises must be made.
Instead, nuclear fusion involves smashing atoms into each other with such force that they fuse, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the process. To make energy from all this, we need a machine, a machine that can reproduce the incredible power of the process that powers the sun within a single building here on Earth. The most popular model being developed by scientists at ITER and elsewhere is the tokamak, a term dreamed up by Soviet scientists in the 1950s. It describes a doghnut-shaped structure with very powerful magnets known as superconductors in the middle and around the outside.
It's the first time it has ever been done in a laboratory anywhere in the world. Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century. In December, 2022, scientists at a US government facility announced that they had achieved that milestone for the first time in history. Instead of a tokamak, the team at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory took a very different approach to fusion.
At ITER, scientists like Valentina Nikolaeva are hoping that after so many years of work they may yet achieve the elusive goal of net energy gain in a way that would provide a blueprint for fusion power plants that could be built in large numbers, generating vast amounts of energy for households and businesses all over the world. Her decision to work in nuclear physics was inspired by her father who took part in the response to the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.
In any circumstances, unlocking such a powerful new source of energy would be a massive development for human civilisation. But as we grapple with the worsening climate crisis and the need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuel energy, the debate around fusion power is gaining new intensity.
We will need multiple companies that are successful. And I'm very convinced that that will happen in the industry. Yeah. This is a huge milestone for us. It's the highest temperature, plasma temperature, that's been measured in a spherical tokamak. And it's also the highest temperature that's been achieved by a privately funded fusion company. So yeah, we're pretty proud of that. And it's just a step on the way to continuing on with our experiments, with trying to create the conditions where fusion can happen.
So rather than it being something that's purely the preserve of the government laboratory, it becomes accessible to privately funded innovators. And as we know, the private capital will demand very rapid progress, very challenging milestones. Not all the private ventures will succeed. But those that do will have a big opportunity as fusion comes closer to commercialisation.
So we have about $2bn under management right now, close to a hundred companies, and we tackle the five biggest sectors of emissions, which are agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation. Well, fusion, I would put it on the extreme end of risk and reward.
But the people who understood the science of computers, and understood the potential for computers, understood that if you could replace a vacuum tube, which is kind of big, kind of clunky, breaks a lot, is slow, generates too much heat, with a much better equivalent, then all of a sudden, the scientific curiosity would kind of change the world. The same people are looking at fusion. And they're saying, hey, we understand how these machines work.
And that made these tokamaks really, really attractive to push to that final little factor that's needed to make more power out than in, and to make fusion power plants and a commercial and economic package that you can build a product in that you could scale. And that's what we're doing.
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