The fantastically fabulous fibs of fusioners
Grifters gotta grift
Pay no attention to the fusion salesmen behind the really big magnets.
First, let's do some definitions
Fission - splitting of atoms to produce usable energy for the benefit of humankind this is typically done with uranium and plutonium.
Fusion - combining of light elements, like deuterium or tritium, to produce heavier elements and energy.
As of today, no one has produced net usable energy from any fusion device, even after 100s of billions of dollars have been spent in pursuit of this chimera with completely disappointing results. (but with weapons grade grifting, marketing, and publicity)
Fusion power has been a diversion and a dalliance from the financing and necessary engineering work of next generation fission reactors. Current fission reactors have been proven over many successful decades of electricity production for billions of people.
If the money spent on fusion research would have been spent instead on advanced fission reactors, the world would be better off today. Alvin Weinberg, who was the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and who holds the patent on light water reactors, which make up the majority of fission reactors in the world today, knew that there were hundreds of other combinations of fuel, moderator, and coolant that would provide inherently safe nuclear power for the world.
Alvin knew that the light water reactor was developed for Admiral Rickover for his submarines. The light water reactor was a good fit for that purpose. The light water reactor was not the best choice for commercial nuclear fission reactors. He said as much during his tenure as director of the lab. But his concern bothered politicians and led to his dismissal from the lab. (His point was not that light water reactors were unsafe, but that newer designs could be safer, with no human intervention.)
It's way past time to reevaluate and develop reactors that are inherently safe based on physics and don't rely on secondary cooling systems, (That can be sabotaged like Three Mile Island.)
The hot fusioners, with a wave of the hand, mislead the public and investors (sins of omission and commission) with the promise of clean, non-radioactive, non-proliferating, abundant, yea, nearly infinite energy. I can only assume that they do this to distinguish themselves from their evil twin, fission, the big, bad, evil, dirty, radioactive, waste producing, explosive Chernobyls, Three Mile Islands, and Fukushimas. (To be fair, the Chernobyl RBMK reactor is a bad design. Three Mile Island and Fukushima needed active cooling even after shutdown, something that next generation reactors will do passively.)
However, the truth is more complicated. Deuterium - Deuterium fusion produces energy and tritium, which is a proliferation risk. If the naysayers to thorium can say that uranium 233 is weapons grade and can be used theoretically by evil persons to create bombs, by the same measure fusion creates tritium which can be used by evil persons to create bombs also.
Deuterium - Tritium fusion produces helium and a very high energy neutron. This neutron we'll pass through the tokamak magnetic confinement (because it is neutral - no electric charge) and when it strikes other materials it will make them radioactive.
The tokamak of ITER fame has a lithium 6 blanket around it, which is designed to absorb the neutrons and make tritium. Why do we never hear about the proliferation risk of nuclear weapons from the production of tritium in a tokamak? The NRC and environmentalists in the US have wet themselves repeatedly over microscopic releases of tritium from fission reactors.
The crippled Fukushima Daiichi reactor had 312 million gallons of tritiated water stored in thousands of tanks around the site waiting for regulators to decide what to do with it. But ITER will create tritium as the most noble and holy fuel of the celestial fusion realms. (I know, I know, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.) An excellent primer on tritium can be found here.
How these companies, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy Inc., General Fusion, TAE Technologies Inc. and Zap Energy Inc and the national labs of the G7 continue to garner billions and billions of dollars, year after year of egregious failure is a mystery to me.
It's obvious that these physicists, engineers, and scientists are remarkable salespeople and play loose on the actual physics. These fusion reactors will produce radioactivity and some of them produce weapons grade tritium but somehow, they fool the people with money.
Oh wait, AI will make it all better. The computers will figure out how to do it.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction, tokamaks will produce net usable energy when Emmanuel Macron and his wife have a baby, when Pam Bondi releases the Epstein client list, and when the US Federal budget is balanced.
