A technician inside the preamplifier support structure of the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, a nuclear weapons facility. Photo / The New York Times
A technician inside the preamplifier support structure of the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, a nuclear weapons facility. Photo / The New York Times
EDITORIAL
Most goals aren’t achieved unless the work is put in first.
United States government scientists at a nuclear weapons research lab announced that they had created the first-ever nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to make.
That got experts and media considering whether it could help curb global warming if the technology could be commercially scaled up.
Inevitably, some may have wondered whether humankind had found the grail that could avert climate disaster.
Unfortunately, it is no quick-fix substitute for measures needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions now and over the next two decades. It doesn’t let us off the hook of pursuing net-zero in 30 years.
The answer is, according to the head of the laboratory, that it will take decades to use fusion to produce commercial electric power.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Dr Kim Budil said: “This is a historic achievement … over the past 60 years thousands of people have contributed to this endeavour and it took real vision to get us here”.
Kim Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, centre, is flanked by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, left, and Arati Prabhakar, the president's science adviser. Photo / J. Scott Applewhite, AP
She added that “with concerted efforts and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant”.
A Cambridge University nuclear energy expert, Tony Roulstone, estimated that the energy output of the experiment was only 0.5 per cent of the energy that was needed to ignite it. “[It’s] a success of the science – but still a long way from providing useful, abundant, clean energy.”
It should be viewed mainly as a welcome dose of longer-term hope.
It is no substitute for the work needed now to drastically reduce fossil fuel use. It’s not going to be useful in decarbonising electricity. And technology already exists to drastically reduce carbon in the electricity sector.
Climate scientists had cautious reactions. Professor Michael Mann tweeted that he would “be more excited about an announcement that US is ending fossil fuel subsidies”.
Professor Katharine Hayhoe tweeted: “I look forward to a world where fusion powers our electricity; but we’re only going to get there if we tackle climate change at scale, today, with the tools available now: efficiency, clean energy, nature + more”. Zeke Hausfather, of CarbonBrief wrote: “Awesome news on fusion, and a good reason to continue to invest going forward. But it’s only one milestone on a long road to make it cheaper than fission and other clean firm generation sources.“
I look forward to a world where fusion powers our electricity; but we're only going to get there if we tackle climate change at scale, today, with the tools available now: efficiency, clean energy, nature + more. We know what to do, we just need to DO it! https://t.co/jtVR4AF3Vj
In the past two years, global damage costs from disasters related to climate change reached US$568 billion (NZ$895) in total, according to an estimate by insurance firm Swiss Re. Efforts to decarbonise could increasingly involve wielding a big stick. The European Union has reached a deal to impose carbon border tariffs on imports of goods made with a high level of emissions.
Research and development of fusion energy reactors can’t slow down current efforts to make the most of renewable energy.
Another thing to remember is that nuclear fusion is not to be confused with nuclear fission.
The major advance in fusion research announced in Washington was decades in coming, with scientists for the first time able to engineer a reaction that produced more power than was used to ignite it. Photo / Jason Laurea, LLNL via AP, File
Fusion powers the Sun and other stars by forcing pairs of light atoms together which releases enormous amounts of energy. The process makes small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste and no greenhouse gas emissions.
Fission is a process of splitting heavy atoms used in nuclear power stations. It produces a lot of long-existing radioactive waste that has to be stored.
The National Ignition Facility at the US laboratory in California is an experiment funded with US$3.5b. Aside from confirming and refining the fusion process, work will have to go into increasing the energy produced at reduced cost.
Budil said: “This is one igniting capsule [of fuel] one time. To realise commercial fusion energy, you have to ... be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute.”
Science research and technological developments in the coming years could well help speed up the process of achieving climate emissions targets.
But fusion energy can’t be relied on to gallop to the planet’s rescue in time.
