Subject: Re: QUESTION: Progress in Fusion

From: [email-masked] (Jon Noring)
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:53:01 GMT

[followup discussion, if any, set to sci.energy]

In article [email-masked] (Mark W. Goodman) writes:

>My view of fusion power has long been that while it may be technically
>feasible, the technology will be so complicated -- orders of magnitude
>greater than fission reactors -- that the supposedly "free" fuel becomes
>quite expensive.  I doubt that fusion will ever be economically
>competitive with solar-derived renewables (photovoltaics, wind, biomass).

Having worked at LLNL, and having the honor of helping out with the design
of the NIF (laser fusion), plus happening to be in the division where the
magnetic fusion people reside, I've come to the same conclusion.

There is no way under the sun that the two fusion paradigms now being
developed, laser fusion and magnetic (Tokamak) fusion will ever be
practical.  They will be so unbelievably complex that the economics of
running them will price them out of even the future energy market when
energy prices will be much higher assuming fossil fuels start running out
and no other alternatives are found (though as I'll write below, solar is
knocking on the door).

Yet DOE keeps pouring money into these two technologies, rather than putting
the money into looking at alternative ways to achieve fusion (and I'm not
talking necessarily about cold fusion).  My Ph.D. advisor, for example,
told me an idea 16 years ago for a fusion reactor involving molten lithium --
it was so simple it was amazing (I can't say if it'd really work, though).
He told a nuclear physicist friend, who was fairly well-known many years ago
in the magnetic fusion are, about his idea, and his friend could not think of
any reason why it would *not* work (so the idea had some soundness to it, at
least at first glance.)  But the answer back essentially was, "but we're
making progress on magnetic fusion, and that's the direction we're going --
no need to look at other ideas."  Clearly a lemming attitude, and one which
has blinded the entire fusion program for the last 40 years.  Once these
fusion approaches became institutionalized (at Princeton, LLNL, and
elsewhere), they became a juggernaut with incredible inertia but with little
progress, as history has shown.  "Fusion is just 40 years away" -- they
told Congress 40 years ago, and they still say it today -- "just 40 years
off".  Rivers and rivers of money have simply disappeared into a cesspool.

It would not surprise me if the Government had taken a different approach and
put the emphasis on exploring for other ways to achieve fusion rather than
*prematurely* going with magnetic fusion starting in the 1950's (and later
adding laser fusion), that we just might have working and economical fusion
reactors today and that these reactors may radically be quite different than
what is now being "developed".

Because of my extensive solar thermal electric background (e.g., worked for
Sandia Livermore while they were testing Solar One at Barstow), I believe
that had the Federal Government took all the money they spent on fusion up
to now, and instead invested it in solar thermal/photovoltaic research, that
we'd now be generating most of our nation's electric power from the deserts
of Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah (a diddly-squat 5000-10000 sq. miles
of molten-salt receiver solar thermal powerplants would easily accomplish
that -- you should get about 100 MWe per square mile of land area, including
significant nighttime power from molten salt storage capacity -- and though
10000 sq. miles seems huge, compared to the total desert areas in the South-
West U.S. is trivial -- there's a lot of land in the U.S. deserts -- it will
prove to be our greatest resource.)

Heck, I've seen the economic numbers from even conservative estimates, that
if the Federal government takes all the money they will invest the next 20
years into laser and magnetic fusion and uses it instead to build the mass
production manufacturing facilities for building large numbers of state-of-
the-art heliostats (by the far the biggest cost in solar thermal plants),
that we'd see within one year ground breaking by industry for several
gigawatt-sized solar plants in southern Nevada because they will clearly be
economical.  Solar electric power generation is somewhat close to economical
right now (the *huge* capital investment to build the facilities to mass
produce heliostats in a large enough capacity to reduce costs enough is about
the only thing holding solar back at this time), and this "give-away" program
(though as a libertarian I find it distasteful, but if a give-away is to be
done, it's better than fusion) will essentially solve the future energy
needs in this country well into the 21st century (provided we evolve into
an electric-based energy system.)

And even if my estimates of solar thermal economics are off, it certainly
won't be Tokamak or Laser Fusion that will ever solve our coming energy
problems!  The money is much better spent into further reducing the cost of
solar power technologies (both thermal and photovoltaic) since they are so
close now and whose environmental impact will be a lot less (the fusion people
don't talk much about the radioactive by-products of their process, nor what
would happen in the case of an accident or terrorist attack!)  Investing it
in ultra-complex fusion concepts to keep our nuclear physicists employed, and
because they can lobby better than the solar supporters is stupid and an
egregious waste of taxpayer's money.

At some future time I may write about the NIF (laser fusion), a technically
cool technology, but wholly impractial for power production, and which should
not be built at all (I'm not sure if it has been mothballed or if it is still
in the running -- anybody know?).  It is a boondoggle, whose primary purpose
is to be a very expensive tool for continuing nuclear weapons research (and
to "reward" the management at LLNL for their well-done work since the 1950's
in building nuclear weapons), particularly to understand better the various
physics effects involved with the entire fusion process for thermonuclear
devices.  Such research, however, can be done by other less expensive ways
including more advanced simulation.  The billion dollars plus to build the
NIF could instead be used to build bigger and faster computers.  Enough said
on that for now.  Can you imagine the power of a $500 million computer?

Oh, and I might write up on the other DOE boondoggle as well, the Yucca
Mountain Project.  I worked for it for a short time, and saw things that
would curl your hair (I haven't decided whether or not to tell all, since I
know things that are very, well, er, should we say, sensitive.)  If I don't
say anything more on either NIF or Yucca Mountain, assume that some DOE
types have somehow muzzled me.  After all, I am covered under various types
of non-disclosure and security arrangements, and they might be able to twist
them enough to silence me.  We'll see.  I know I will have succeeded with
this post if I do get a phone call or visit from DOE people.

Anyway, it's amazing how DOE has so screwed up energy research and nuclear
waste disposal in this country.  I'll be the first one to clap when DOE is
dismantled since it has proven to serve no useful purpose to properly advance
energy research nor to solve our coming future energy problems.  DOE is a
bureaucratic nightmare that sucks at the public trough, and which you can't
fully appreciate until you've worked for the National Labs for 15 years as I
have.  If others reading this have DOE stories to tell, do share them.  It's
amazing how political and bureaucratic that organization is.

Jon Noring

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