Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

15 Nuclear <strong>Energy</strong> 268
Fusion is therefore a complicated <strong>and</strong> not particularly cheap way to
generate electricity. Meanwhile, we are not running terribly short on
renewable ways to produce electricity: solar; wind; hydroelectric; geothermal;
tidal. Liquid fuels for transportation represent a greater <strong>and</strong> more
pressing challenge, <strong>and</strong> fusion does not directly address this aspect
any better than other options for electrical production. Fusion is by far
the most complex power generation scheme we have ever attempted,
evidenced by the 70 year effort to bring it to fruition that is still underway.
How many physics PhDs will it take to keep a fusion plant running?
Sometimes, we get stuck pursuing a flawed vision of the future, <strong>and</strong>
have trouble reevaluating our options. Imagine being a middle-aged
physicist or engineer in the 1950s. In your lifetime, you would have seen
the advent of the car, airplane, radio, television, nuclear fission, among
a blur of other technology advances. The next frontier was obviously
fusion, so let’s crack that one! At this point, 70 years later, maybe we
should ask: why?
And let’s point out that fusion is not without its waste challenges. It is
still a radioactive environment, albeit not one that produces dangerous
4
direct products ( He is okay!). It does involve a radioactive fuel source
(tritium), <strong>and</strong> it does embed the containment vessel with high energy
particles <strong>and</strong> neutrons that over time compromise the integrity of the
vessel so that it must be discarded as a radioactively-charged hunk of
metal. 75 By comparison, solar, wind, <strong>and</strong> other renewable sources based
on the sun have no such problems. All of the nastiness is created in the
sun, <strong>and</strong> stays in the sun.
75: Transmutation of the nuclei in the material
will create radioactivity.
15.5.3 Pros <strong>and</strong> Cons of Fusion
Collecting the advantages <strong>and</strong> disadvantages of fusion, we start with
the positive attributes:
◮ Fusion would enjoy an inexhaustible supply of deuterium, easily
accessed, outlasting the sun;
◮ The fusion reactor would serve as a heat source for tried-<strong>and</strong>-true
steam-driven power plant technology.
And now the not-so-good aspects:
◮ Stable plasmas are exceedingly hard to generate at the requisite
temperatures;
◮ 70 years of effort have not yet borne fruit as an energy supply;
◮ Tritium is not available, <strong>and</strong> must be fabricated from a limited
supply of lithium;
◮ Fusion still contends with radioactive fuel (tritium) <strong>and</strong> a containment
vessel that is radioactively contaminated.
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.