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Nuclear Fusion Copyright © 2016 by Gerald Black. Published by The Mars Society with permission NUCLEAR FUSION: THE SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY PROBLEM AND TO ADVANCED SPACE PROPULSION Gerald Black Aerospace Engineer (retired, 40+ year career); email: [email protected] Currently Chair of the Ohio Chapter of the Mars Society Presented at Mars Society Annual Convention, Washington DC, September 22, 2016 ABSTRACT Nuclear fusion has long been viewed as a potential solution to the world’s energy needs. However, the government sponsored megaprojects have been floundering. The two multi-billion- dollar flagship programs, the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) and the National Ignition Facility (NIF), have both experienced years of delays and a several-fold increase in costs. The ITER tokamak design is so large and complex that, even if this approach succeeds, there is doubt that it would be economical. After years of testing at full power, the NIF facility is still far short of achieving its goal of fusion ignition. But hope is not lost. Several private companies have come up with smaller and simpler approaches that show promise. This talk highlights the progress made by one such private company, namely LPPFusion (formerly called Lawrenceville Plasma Physics). LPPFusion is developing focus fusion technology based on the dense plasma focus device and hydrogen-boron 11 fuel. This approach, if it works, would produce a fusion power generator small enough to fit in a truck. This device would produce no radioactivity, there would be no possibility of a meltdown or other safety issues, and it would be more economical than any other source of electricity. Besides solving the energy problem, this approach would provide an enormous advance in space propulsion, making possible human travel from earth to Mars in only two weeks. INTRODUCTION The world’s energy consumption has been growing steadily over the years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Figure 1 shows the world energy consumption for each of the major fuel from 1990 to 2040. As is shown in this figure, the three largest contributors to the world’s energy consumption are petroleum and other liquid fuels, coal and natural gas. Although coal consumption is projected to plateau, liquid fuels and natural gas consumption are projected to continue increasing. Unfortunately, these three fossil fuels contribute to global warming and to pollution. The latest comprehensive report on climate change is the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1. Per this report, warming of the atmosphere and ocean system has been unequivocal, with many of the associated impacts such as sea level change (among other metrics) having occurred since 1950 at rates unprecedented in the historical record. Furthermore, it is extremely likely (95 – 100 percent probability) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since 1950. In addition to the global warming problem, fossil fuels cause pollution that has a harmful effect on health, especially for people living in large cities. Per the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2012 about 7 million people die annually because of air pollution exposure2. The WHO data reveals a strong link between pollution and deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases. Though it is obviously desirable to move away from fossil fuels, it is also necessary to pay close attention to the cost of the various energy sources. If the cost is too high, this impedes economic growth. This is especially true for the developing countries such as Africa. To successfully move away from fossil fuels, we need an energy source that is at least as cheap or cheaper than the fossil fuels. This is where the problem lies. Figure 2 shows the relative cost of various energy sources in dollars per million BTUs. Unfortunately, coal and natural gas are currently the two cheapest sources of energy, well below the cost of nuclear fission, solar, and wind energy. Nuclear fusion could be the solution to this problem if we can overcome the technical challenges to make it work and to be inexpensive. Figure 2 includes a fusion energy source known as focus fusion that would (if it can be made to work) be much cheaper than fossil fuels. Focus fusion will be discussed later in this document. In addition to needing a solution to the world’s energy problem, a large advance in space propulsion is needed to meet future needs. With today’s propulsion technology, a journey to Mars takes a minimum of 6 months. This needs to be shortened to limit the effects of radiation and microgravity on the human body. Human travel to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn using current propulsion would take so long as to be prohibitive. Advanced propulsion is also the key to bringing down the cost of space travel, since it would make possible reusable single stage to orbit vehicles. Nuclear fusion could also be the solution to advanced space propulsion. ADVANTAGES OF NUCLEAR FUSION OVER NUCLEAR FISSION Nuclear fusion has several advantages over nuclear fission. One critical advantage is safety. Nuclear fission reactors are susceptible to meltdown, thus having the potential to cause serious accidents or disasters such as happened in the U.S. with Three Mile Island, in Russia with Chernobyl and in Japan with the Fukushima reactors. There is no chance of a meltdown or any other accident affecting public safety with fusion power plants. A second important issue is nuclear proliferation. Fission reactors require enriched uranium. The problem is that the same centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium can also produce highly enriched uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons. By contrast, the fuels used for fusion reactors are lighter elements that cannot be used for nuclear weapons. Since some fusion fuels (such as deuterium-tritium used for tokamaks) do produce neutrons, there is a slight risk that a nation with the know how could utilize these neutrons to breed weapons grade plutonium from uranium 238. However, this risk is small compared to the nuclear proliferation risk of a fission reactor. Other fusion fuels (such as hydrogen-boron 11) produce no neutrons and thus have zero nuclear proliferation risk. A third advantage of fusion versus fission concerns radioactive waste. Fission reactors produce long lived radioactive waste. This waste must safely be stored for thousands of years, yet there has been no agreement on how to do that. By contrast, for nuclear fusion radioactive waste is either of little concern or no concern at all, depending on what fuel is used. Some fusion fuels (such as deuterium-tritium) produce neutrons and therefore would produce radioactive waste. However, this waste is relatively short lived (no more than about 50 or 100 years) and can be safely stored using conventional means. Other fusion fuels (such as hydrogen-boron11) produce no neutrons, and thus would produce no radioactive waste. A final factor is cost. Nuclear fission is very expensive compared to coal and natural gas as is shown in figure 2. For fusion power, the cost would depend on the design of the fusion reactor. A very large and complex reactor such as a tokamak would likely not be economical. However, smaller and simpler fusion devices (such as the focus fusion device) would be cheaper than fossil fuels. THE FAILURE OF THE GOVERNMENT FUSION MEGAPROJECTS Although fusion research began in the 1920s, it was not till the 1950s that serious efforts to develop fusion power devices were undertaken. By the end of the 1960s, many different fusion devices existed, and no one knew which device might lead to practical fusion power. In the 1950s the Russians invented the tokamak device (a magnetic confinement device), and they achieved a lot of progress with the tokamak during the 1960s. Inertial confinement fusion, whereby lasers blast a pellet of fuel to make it implode, was also heralded in the 1960s as a promising means of achieving fusion power. In the mid-1970s, administrators decided to abandon a broad-based approach and to focus nearly all fusion research on the tokamak and on laser based inertial confinement fusion. This led to two government sponsored megaprojects. The first megaproject is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Due to instabilities in the plasma, scientists found that tokamaks had to be very large to tame the instabilities and produce useful power. Many large tokamaks had already been built by several countries, but something larger than any one country could afford was needed to take the next step toward a workable tokamak. Thus, the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States banded together to fund and build the ITER reactor, which is under construction in southern France. See figure 3 for an artist’s drawing of ITER. The person in the lower left corner of the structure illustrates the immense size of the reactor. Progress on ITER has not gone well. The estimated date for full power operation has slipped from 2016 till 2027, and the cost has increased from $5 billion to $20 billion3. By contrast, the Large Hadron Collider (the European particle collider that discovered the Higgs Boson) cost $4.75 billion. Furthermore, this device is essentially a science project and is not intended to produce any electricity. It will take an even more capable and complex tokamak to contribute electricity to the grid. There is also the problem that, even if the tokamak approach works, it will probably not be economical. A workable tokamak reactor is likely to be so large and complex that it would cost billions to build. Another problem is that these reactors (which use deuterium-tritium fuel) produce neutrons that eventually make the walls and other parts of the reactor radioactive, weakening the parts, and limiting the life of the reactor.
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