Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Con-Fusion?

Great news, practical, sustained, over-unity nuclear fusion reactors capable of connecting to the grid are now just a year away.

Well that's what we're being told but I'm afraid I don't believe it.

Perhaps it's because we've been regularly told since the 1970s that such things were "just a decade or two away" that my skepticsm about such a breakthrough within the next 12 months is so high.

Never the less, a crowd called Commowealth Fusion (I didn't link to their website because it seems a bit dodgy, attempting to start a file-download right on the front page) is reported as building a "tokamak called SPARC" that "is over 70 percent complete and is planned to be operating as soon as next year".

ArsTechnica is running this story on the subject.

The generation-ready version of this reactor is to be called ARC and, according to the article, it will generate about 1.13GW of power from sustained fusion. Only around 500MW of that output will be realised as electrical energy and there'll be another 100MW deducted for the overhead of running the plant -- leaving a net output of 400MW available to inject into the grid.

Sounds fantastic doesn't it?

Although it's billed as a sustained fusion reaction, apparently the device will only run for 15 minutes at a time, followed by a 1 minute "cool down" period so that it doesn't get too melty.

It sounds as if they're 99 percent of the way there -- but that kind of sums up the whole nuclear fusion industry for the past 30 years doesn't it?

Of course at some stage there has to be a breakthrough that will actually see companies delivering on those long-held promises of clean, green fusion power but I'm not going to be holding my breath and I doubt it will be in my lifetime (especially if I hold my breath because doing that for more than a minute or three can significantly reduce that lifetime).

As I've said many times before in this column, I really think we'd be far better off focusing on coming up with more cost-effective and efficient ways to store energy, rather than chasing illusive fusion.

As you saw in Tuesday's column, thanks to renewables such as solar, there are times when we actually have so much power that some countries pay their people to use the damned stuff during periods of peak generation. If, instead of wasting that energy, we could store it for use later during periods of peak demand then most of the problems that a fusion reactor is supposed to solve would go away.

I've also pointed out before that the transition to EVs could be the missing link in the truly effective use of renewable energy generation. Fill those EV batteries with solar-generated electricity during peak-production times and then suck the power back out by plugging them into your house when you get home and demand on the grid is highest.

The real value of an electrically powered transport fleet is as much the fact that it represents an incredibly large mobile battery as it is that we no longer have to buy petrol at the pump.

Bookmark this column because I'm picking that pretty soon, governments and power companies around the world will finally get the message and we'll see a huge push to promote EVs, not only as green transport but also as a way of making intermittent renewables truly practical.

I expect to see smart power companies offering EV owners a discounted price for power if they plug their cars into the grid and allow some of the battery energy to be sucked out at times of peak demand. They may even offer free charging -- of some of that energy can later be retreived and sold during those peak-demand periods.

In the meantime, there are a lot of companies all claiming that they've got the secret sauce that will deliver on the fusion-reactor promise. Right now, I think that secret sauce contains a pretty good dash of snake-oil.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font