The world is now on the last leg of the decades-long race to achieve net energy gain from nuclear fusion. Will competition or collaboration be the key to reaching the finish line?
Nuclear is an efficient, clean and reliable energy source. However, the threat of meltdowns — among many things — explains why nuclear fuels don’t power most of the world today.
The sustainability movement has fuelled the race to achieve the highest net energy gain from nuclear, accelerating research and development in fusion.
The prize: Near-limitless clean energy supply
Mastering self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction represents a virtually boundless source of clean energy without worrying about terrifying scenarios — like what happened in Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011. Fusion minimally contributes to global warming, which can prevent climate change from worsening.
Aside from environmental considerations, generating electric power through fusion reaction yields economic benefits and geopolitical advantages. A country predominantly running on fusion can keep utility costs low, incentivizing businesses to invest and create jobs.
The higher the net energy gain a nation can achieve, the more attractive it becomes to the global industrial sector — especially to players with ESG goals seeking to lease green buildings.
Nuclear energy also promises self-sufficiency. Fuel imports are subject to price manipulation by exporters, piracy, waterway bottlenecks and military blockades, leaving the importer prone to domestic economic, political and humanitarian crises.
Energy-self-sufficient nations can also be economically resilient. They can use their revenue to diversify their sources of income, swell their coffers further and become less vulnerable to economic shocks. With less air pollution, these countries can promote and maintain good public health more effectively.
Challenges: Old and new nuclear energy downsides
Nuclear fusion powers and keeps stars alive for millions to trillions of years — an energy-generating process that could go on forever. The problem is that replicating solar fusion on Earth means scaling down the sun on a planet with suboptimal conditions.
The Sun’s gravity creates intense pressure, causing ordinary hydrogen to burn at enormous temperatures and densities to produce harmless helium isotopes sustained by an infinite confinement time. Earth’s surface temperature is significantly cooler, and its gravitational pull is much weaker than the Sun’s.
Nuclear scientists must use neutron-heavy hydrogen isotopes — deuterium and tritium — to devise artificial fusion reaction schemes that work around the planet’s lower particle density and poorer energy confinement levels. Deuterium and tritium are more reactive than ordinary hydrogen, making fusion reactors feasible.
Unlike ordinary hydrogen, these nuclear fuels have detrimental byproducts. Their energy output consists of energetic neutron streams, which:
- Generate more radioactive waste by volume — albeit with less radioactivity per kilogram — than fission-reactor one.
- Cause worse radiation damage to structures.
- Require biological shielding.
- Produce weapons-grade plutonium-239.
Moreover, tritium is scarce in nature. Although deuterium is readily available in ordinary water, it’s less efficient. Fusion reactors need both fuels to sustainably achieve net energy gain.
Nuclear fuels deplete and don’t renew themselves — scientists can only regenerate tritium to some extent with a lithium blanket partly surrounding a reactor. Fusion power plants need to source tritium from nuclear fission reactors, which may discourage governments from decommissioning them.
Fusion reactors are subject to parasitic energy consumption. These facilities need electricity to control plasma — a state of matter where fusion reactions occur — and continuously power external auxiliary systems.
On top of that, fusion reactors — like fission ones — are prone to tritium release, require significant coolant resources and have high operating costs.
A nuclear fusion marathon: US vs China
Fusion is feasible but not yet commercially viable. The race is on to solve this physics puzzle, and two countries are ahead of the pack — the US and China. Both nations have been studying fusion for decades, although Uncle Sam had a 10-year head start when it began its foray into this futuristic energy domain in the early 1950s.
The Americans have been comfortably ahead of the Chinese until recently. Beijing has been busy in the lab since 2015 and surpassed Washington in the fusion patent ranking, proving the country’s determination to master the science before anyone else.
The roadmap prepared by US fusion scientists and engineers published in 2020 may have inspired China’s commercial fusion energy programme. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Head JP Allain claims that the East Asian country’s programme is similar to theirs and is building its long-term vision rapidly.
Allain adds that President Xi Jinping’s government spends twice the amount the Americans do on fusion at $1.5 billion yearly. At this rate, China may overtake the US and Europe in magnetic confinement fusion — an approach to generate thermonuclear fusion power using magnetic fields — by 2027.
Although China has the edge in public spending, the US attracts more private funding. From 2022 to 2023, investors poured $5.9 billion into fusion. Still, fusion startups have sprung up like mushrooms across China.
While the Chinese are making inroads into magnetic fusion, the Americans are having breakthroughs in laser-based fusion. In July 2023, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California recorded a net energy gain by fusing two atoms with a laser using 2.05 megajoules of energy and generating an output of 3.15 megajoules.
Collaboration of more than 30 countries
Collaboration defines the nuclear fusion race just as much as competition. In fact, 33 countries are behind the world’s largest fusion project — the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).
The ITER Organization has also signed non-member technical cooperation agreements with Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan. Switzerland is a nonparticipating member, while the United Kingdom is out — although existing contracts with British companies and citizens remain valid.
The US, China, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and 27 European Union members have teamed up to construct the planet’s largest tokamak — a doughnut-shaped device for magnetic fusion confinement. It’s still under construction in southern France. Once operational, it will pave the way for fusion energy production at an industrial level.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has also initiated a fusion programme. The ASEAN School on Plasma and Nuclear Fusion is vital in advancing research in this emerging field. It allows international experts to share their knowledge and experience with young researchers from Southeast Asia, inspiring the next generation of fusion scientists.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and ITER Organization support the initiative, promoting education in cutting-edge theories and techniques, personnel training, and future comparative and joint experiments.
The finish line: When will the world achieve sustained net energy gain?
The race to achieve net energy gain from fusion may last until the 2030s or 2040s.
While only time will tell which country or countries will reign supreme, the world will win — whichever reaches the finish line first.
The race to near-boundless clean energy isn’t a zero-sum game, so there will only be laggers, no losers.
