The False Hype Around Nuclear Fusion

The internet has been awash with reports of a “major breakthrough” in nuclear fusion technology that could change the way we produce energy, moving from dirty fossil fuels to clean, green energy.

In a historic first, the team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (LLNL), recently announced that they managed to create a surplus of nuclear fusion energy by bombarding hydrogen isotopes with powerful lasers.

But according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the reports are misleading and major hurdles to a fusion-powered world remain.

The fusion achievement that the US Energy Department has announced is scientifically significant but does not relate primarily to the generation of electricity.

Replicating the process that gives the Sun its energy — turning hydrogen into helium - is not as simple as the media outlets may have it sound.

It is true that carbon-free, fusion-powered electricity generation is everyone’s dream but not everyone was paying close attention to what has been said and what the truth is.

The focus was on what Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the news conference but few people paid attention to National Nuclear Security Administration Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Marv Adams who noted that while the science is there, the practicality of using it to replace fossil fuels is still not relevant.

The fact is that the project, carried out in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), focuses more on protecting nuclear stockpiles than it does on producing clean energy, but you wouldn’t know that from Granholms’ press conference, the media reportage, or comments made by public figures.

Granholm said this new breakthrough will provide “invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.”

While she did say that nuclear fusion would “help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change” she also mentioned that it would help in “maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”

US government officials are also guilty of misconstruing the news in what seems to be their over-excitement that the use of fusion energy could halt or even reverse the negative effects of climate change.

U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell said, “This breakthrough will ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, open new frontiers in science, and enable progress toward new ways to power our homes and offices in future decades.”

“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla.

We still have a long way to go, but this… could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed.

“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.

But again, the possibility of nuclear fusion replacing fossil fuels wasn’t the real news.

According to Molly Glick at Inverse, “the National Ignition Facility team emphasized that, while the recent feat is worth celebrating, we can’t expect large-scale fusion plants to power our homes anytime soon.”

She quotes Mark Herrmann, deputy director for fundamental weapons physics at LLNL, who said, “The laser wasn't designed to be efficient. The laser was designed to give us as much juice as possible to make these incredible conditions possible happen basically in the laboratory.”

Yes, the National Ignition Facility at LLNL finally attained “fusion ignition” – a long-awaited achievement for nuclear fusion researchers around the globe, but fusion ignition for consumer electricity generation is only one part of what NIF does.

NIF was built for two missions: performing research in support of the Stockpile Stewardship Program - its foremost duty - and to further our quest to understand and harness energy from nuclear fusion.

Its second mission, having reached a certain level of success now, is what made headlines, but it is mostly hype and a lot less fact that you will see in the media.

According to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), one of its core missions is to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.

The Office of Defense Programs carries out NNSA’s mission to maintain and modernize the nuclear stockpile through the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program.

According to experts with knowledge of what NIF does, the machine to create nuclear fusion used approximately 400 megajoules to operate during the experiment and lost about 99% of the power it consumed.

That difference in energy is considerably far from what anyone would consider a net energy gain.

Another problem with the hype about nuclear fusion soon replacing fossil fuels is that the machine used for the experiment takes a number of hours until it can be reused. It took years to perfect the process and the ability to use the machine at all.

In order to generate consumer-level energy, the machine would need to accomplish this feat 10,000 times faster and scientists and engineers would need to perfect a way to extract the energy in the form of heat for practical use.

According to Tom Hartsfield at Big Think, there is also a supply problem. The pellets used to produce fusion contain deuterium and tritium.

While deuterium is plentiful, unfortunately, the world’s entire supply of tritium is somewhere around a pithy 50 pounds and the market cost of tritium stands at around $1 million per ounce.

Clearly, fusion energy to create consumer-ready electricity production is far off. As with anything in the news, be aware of the hype and read the small print. Yes, nuclear fusion as a clean energy source may be the future. But not yet.