5 things to know about how nuclear fusion could power your home

Nuclear fusion may have reached a holy grail moment last week, but the path toward powering the world using the technology remains complicated, costly and years away from reality.

The science of nuclear fusion involves smashing two atoms together at incredibly high speeds and transforming elements from that reaction into electricity that people can use. The potential upside is a clean, cheap and nearly limitless source of energy that doesn’t emit carbon or generate radioactive waste.

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Federal scientists last week announced a major breakthrough: They had conducted a nuclear fusion experiment that created more energy than it consumed, called net energy gain — achieving one of scientists’ most elusive goals.

“This is a landmark achievement,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a news conference announcing the results.

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Still, there are science and engineering obstacles ahead.

The quest for nuclear fusion power — marked by competing approaches, cost overruns, delays and hype — to power homes, offices and other buildings at a scale large enough and in time to dent the rapid warming of the world’s remains uncertain.

Here are five things you should know about nuclear fusion energy and its path to powering your home.

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1. There’s more than one way to do it

Scientists are trying to replicate the scientific reactions that happen inside the sun to create nuclear fusion power on Earth.

To power those experiments, the major difference comes in what type of reactors researchers use.

One type is called inertial confinement, which relies mostly on lasers; it was used by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which announced last week’s achievement.

The other is magnetic confinement, which uses magnetic fields. A few researchers are using a hybrid of the two.

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Philip Saltonstall/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Reuters

Academic labs across the world are trying to master the basic science of most methods.

In the private sector, more than 30 companies are focused on creating nuclear fusion energy for the commercial market, according to the Fusion Industry Association, a nonprofit trade group.

Philip Saltonstall/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Reuters

Roughly 15 use magnetic confinement, with at least eight using inertial methods, the trade group’s data shows.

It is unclear how impactful last week’s announcement from the laser field will be for those using magnetic or hybrid methods to achieve nuclear fusion, experts said.

But scientists throughout the industry can learn from the scientific underpinnings of getting net energy from a fusion reaction.

2. Scientific and engineering challenges lie ahead

Federal researchers shot high-powered lasers at a tiny capsule to achieve net energy in a reaction lasting a few billionths of a second.

Researchers can do that only a few times per day at most, but if that type of solution were to be used broadly, lasers would need to fire at least once per second, or up to 10 times per second, scientists said.

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In the magnetic arena, the magnets are very expensive, and reducing those costs to a point where companies could provide energy cheaply will be a major hurdle, researchers said.

Additionally, lasers or magnet machines that could power cities would need to be large and housed in facilities that require specific alloys and metals that can be costly and hard to procure, scientists said.

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Even if all that is mastered, shipping the power through the energy grid could prove difficult.

One large facility could not power the whole country, energy experts noted, given America’s outdated grid. Smaller nuclear fusion sites would need to be placed throughout the country.

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3. It’ll cost a lot

To capitalize on last week’s announcement, scholars, trade association experts and venture capitalists said, the government and private sector must dedicate a lot more cash to make nuclear fusion a realistic solution.

Nearly $5 billion has been invested in the industry, trade association data shows, with about $2.8 billion coming in the past year.

Much of that has come from the private sector. The government, mostly through the Energy Department’s Fusion Energy Sciences program, is spending about $700 million a year to fund the science.

Andrew Holland, chief executive of the Fusion Industry Association, said the government has a plan to get nuclear fusion test facilities up within the next decade, but to achieve that, more money is needed.

“It’s a good plan,” he said. “But they haven’t matched their budget to their ambition.”

Holland said an additional $1 billion to $2 billion in government funding over the next five years, along with an increase in the Fusion Energy Sciences budget from roughly $700 million to $1 billion, would be the kind of robust funding that’s needed.

It would help power research, absorb manufacturing costs and provide subsidies to make nuclear fusion economically feasible for companies to pursue.

“Time is money,” said Carlos Paz-Soldan, an associate professor of applied physics at Columbia University. “Money is time.”

4. The fuel matters

Many researchers use a fuel source composed of deuterium and tritium, variants of hydrogen.

Deuterium is found in seawater and is abundant.

Tritium produced naturally is extremely rare and in a potential shortage. Companies would have to find a way to source it in mass, probably getting it from nuclear reactors, which create it as a byproduct.

Another fuel source is pB11, a combination of hydrogen and boron. But that fuel needs to be heated to far higher temperatures than other variants to create fusion energy, which can bring safety risks, multiple experts said.

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5. It’s a long way to reality

Americans should not expect their toasters, cars or laptops to be powered by fusion energy anytime soon, scientists said.

Even if everything goes to plan, the first test facilities that demonstrate nuclear fusion as a viable power source for towns and cities may not be online until the 2030s.

From there, scientists and experts said, building out full-scale facilities could take another decade or so.

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The history of fusion projects indicates that cost overruns and delays are likely. And with few years left before the world’s course toward dangerous warming is nonreversible, each year matters, experts said.

“There’s a ticking clock here,” said Holland.

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