nuclear-news

Hugely costly venture – nuclear fusion – now going private – but success is as elusive as ever

So far, while nuclear fusion has been successfully achieved in labs, ignition has remained elusive.

 Europe’s Nuclear Fusion Race Is Going Private. The race is on to achieve commercial nuclear fusion. Believers in the “holy grail of clean energy” are hopeful that a breakthrough in nuclear fusion is imminent
enough that the clean energy source could power a green energy transition sweeping and swift enough to help the world achieve the emissions targets set by the Paris climate accord.

So far, relatively few large-scale nuclear fusion initiatives have gotten off the ground, due to huge barriers to entry. Because of the enormous expense associated with building a reactor capable of facilitating fusion, so far the field has been dominated by publicly funded projects such as Europe’s ITER and China’s EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak). As scientists have gotten closer and closer to achieving ‘ignition’ – which refers to a nuclear fusion reaction that emits more energy than it consumes – the private sector has become increasingly interested in getting into the industry on the bottom floor and positioning itself at the forefront of what could be a world-changing innovation. So far, while nuclear fusion has been successfully achieved in labs, ignition has remained elusive.

 Naked Capitalism 10th Feb 2022

February 12, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, technology