Fusion: Expensive and Taking Forever?

Abstract

The road map of fusion power is compared to the development and deployment of other energy technologies. A generic deployment model is presented, which describes the fastest deployment (of any new technology) achievable with the constraint that the industrial capacity that needs to be built up must be continuous and should not overshoot the replacement market in the final, saturated state. It is shown that the development needs an 'investment' phase to build up industrial capacity which takes several decades, during which growth is typically exponential, but net energy production is negligible. During the exponential growth the cost is dominated by the capital investment, which allows for a simple comparison of different energy technologies. Fusion is at the start of the exponential growth phase, while still having significant uncertainties concerning its technical feasibility. In comparison to e.g. solar PV and wind, fusion is 'late', lagging by some 50 years. To follow the same rate of development that fission, wind and PV have shown, fusion will need to have 3 DEMO reactors operational in the early 2050s, followed by 10 generation one (GEN1) plants in the early 2060s and 100 GEN2 plants in the early 2070s. For the cost development to be comparable, an estimated allowable cost for one DEMO reactor is *20 G$. While these indicative numbers for the pace and cost of development are very challenging but perhaps not unthinkable for fusion, this analysis does point towards an emphasis on 'simpler and cheaper' reactor designs.

Economic aspects of the deployment of fusion energy: the valley of death and the innovation cycle

“…Assuming for the sake of the argument that fusion power plants have a unit size of 1 GWe, this build-up calls for the construction of 5000 plants in 20 years, or 250 per year. To put this into perspective: the world is presently pooling resources to realize 1 ITER in 20 years; and the present global nuclear fission industry has the capacity to build about ten 3 , not hundreds, reactors per year.…”

“…Illustration of the growth model introduced in[3]. A comparison of the same model in linear or logarithmic representation (graph on the right) makes clear that the exponential growth is an essential phase to prepare the industry for the linear growth, but the contribution to power generation is negligible.…”

“…The paper gives the power in PJ per year: 120-150 10 3 PJ yr −1 3. There are presently about 50 power plants under construction worldwide (world nuclear association).…”

“…The concept of this graph and the historic data for fission, wind and solar PV, are derived from[3,4].…”

Preface to the Special Issue: Strategic Opportunities for Fusion Energy

“…In addition to the previously mentioned dual-path strategy from the Japanese Working Group [6] that boosts progress of the mainstream approach embodied by the tokamak and stellarator while also promoting innovative technological developments and breakthroughs, Donne et al [15] argue for an extended operation and enhancements of the JET tokamak that will make experiments on JET even more relevant for ITER; Lopes Cardozo, Lange, and Kramer [16] put into perspective the high initial development costs for fusion and note that these high initial costs are both expected and tolerable on a longer time frame; Stacey [17] and Manheimer [18] review the application of fusion technology to treat fission waste and breed fissile fuel; Hornfeld [19] and Sheffield [20] make observations on the necessity for international collaboration and fusion concept innovation in the strategic directions of fusion energy research; and Wurden et al [21] call for a renewed effort in fusion powered space propulsion as part of a larger effort for planetary defense against what would be a devastating collision with a comet.…”