Fusion Power - Current Status

Current Status

Despite optimism dating back to the 1950s about the wide-scale harnessing of fusion power, there are still significant barriers standing between current scientific understanding and technological capabilities and the practical realization of fusion as an energy source. Research, while making steady progress, has also continually thrown up new difficulties. Therefore it remains unclear whether an economically viable fusion plant is possible. A 2006 editorial in New Scientist magazine opined that "if commercial fusion is viable, it may well be a century away."

Several fusion D-T burning tokamak test devices have been built (TFTR, JET); it was hoped that TFTR would be able to produce more thermal energy than electrical energy consumed but this was not achieved. The ITER project is currently leading the effort to commercialize fusion power.

A paper published in January 2009 and part of the IAEA Fusion Conference Proceedings at Geneva last October claims that small 50 MW Tokamak style reactors are feasible.

In 2009, a high-energy laser system, the National Ignition Facility, was created in the US, which can heat hydrogen atoms to temperatures only existing in nature in the cores of stars. The new laser is expected to have the ability to produce, for the first time, more energy from controlled, inertially confined nuclear fusion than was required to initiate the reaction. In 2010, NIF researchers were conducting a series of "tuning" shots to determine the optimal target design and laser parameters for high-energy ignition experiments with fusion fuel in the following months. Two firing tests were performed on 31 October 2010 and 2 November 2010. In early 2012, NIF director Mike Dunne expected the laser system to generate fusion with net energy gain by the end of 2012.