Front Burner - A nuclear fusion energy revolution?

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

After decades of research, in early December scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California made a historic breakthrough in nuclear fusion by generating more energy than it took to create it. It’s a major scientific step because, according to experts, nuclear fusion has the potential to deliver clean and abundant zero-carbon energy. Richard Carlson is the director of energy policy at an environmental charity called Pollution Probe. Today on Front Burner, he'll explain how nuclear fusion uses the same process that powers the sun and why it could be a game changer for clean energy, if we can figure out how to harness it.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Today, we're here to talk about fusion, combining two particles into one. That's U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm talking last week about a major scientific breakthrough. Last week at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, scientists at the National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition.

And that is creating more energy from fusion reactions than the energy used to start the process. It's the first time it has ever been done in a laboratory. Nuclear fusion has the potential to deliver clean, zero-carbon, limitless energy, all through unlocking the same process that powers the sun. Today, I'm joined by Richard Carlson. He's the director of energy policy at an environmental charity called Pollution Probe. And he's here with me now to explain how nuclear fusion could be a game changer for clean energy,

if we can figure out how to use it. Hi, Richard. Thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. Thank you for having me. So could we start by me asking you your reaction to this news last week? How did you react to it? As a science and energy nerd, I was really intrigued and really shocked because this is something that people have been trying for decades. And it's great to see what we can do and what science can accomplish. Before we dig into all the details, a lot of people seem to be ecstatic about this breakthrough. And I wonder if you could put that into context for me. How big a deal is this advancement in nuclear fusion? On a scientific front, this is quite an advancement. For the first time, people have proved that the concept of fusion energy is possible.

Ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are found only in the stars and the sun. And the second thing it does, of course, is that this milestone moves us one significant step closer milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society. But it is also important to note that this is not demonstrating a commercial technology, nor is it demonstrating a viable commercial pathway. This is really just a proof of the concept.

And what is the concept? So in the simplest terms, maybe you can explain to me what exactly nuclear fusion is. Well, with nuclear fusion, what you do is you combine atoms of hydrogen. There's different types of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium and whatnot, but it's really not that important. Effectively, what you're doing is you fuse two hydrogen atoms together,

which produces helium and energy. And so that is the process that happens in the inside of the sun. And it's a very good way of getting energy. We know it works. Well, we have hydrogen bombs, for example, so we know you can get good way of getting energy. We know it works. Well, we have hydrogen bombs, for example, so we know you can get a lot of energy from the process of fusion. The problem of doing it is in order to get the atoms to fuse together, you have to raise them to really, really high temperatures,

upwards of 100 million degrees Celsius, which is hotter than the inside of the sun. And that takes a lot of energy. So in the past, they've been able to demonstrate that fusion can happen. But the amount of energy we got out of the fusion process was less than the amount we put into it to heat it up, which is not a viable energy source, obviously. Yes, it wouldn't be worth it. So this for the first time, there was more energy was received from the fusion reaction than was put in to cause the fusion reaction. Just a little bit of more energy, not a lot. I read it was like enough to power a light bulb.

Yes, depending on how it is converted, it would probably be similar to that. And if you think about the amount of energy, this is the world's largest laser that was used. This is something that's very difficult to do. So it's, as I'm saying, it's a proof of a concept that this could work. And talk to me a little bit more about these lasers that the scientists use. They used a bunch of lasers, right? Yeah, they use the world's largest laser, and it's a very technically advanced laser system that they use. And there are different ways that people are trying to create fusion. So one of them is this using lasers to having a ball of hydrogen and then you shine the laser on it and heat it up and cause it in order the fusion reaction. There are other ways of people are trying to do fusion.

in order to fusion reaction. There are other ways of people trying to do fusion. There's a project in southern France called ITER, which is using magnets and trying to create heat and using hydrogen plasma and encasing it within a magnetic field in order to create the fusion reaction. So when I read headlines about scientists unlocking the power of the sun here, that's not hyperbolic. No, we are unlocking the power of the sun here, that's not hyperbolic.

No, we are unlocking the same mechanism that the sun uses to provide us energy, such as heat. We are using that same process of fusing hydrogen and other elements to create new elements. And that is the same process that does happen in the sun. Why do people like nuclear fusion so much from an environmental perspective? Well, as we all know, we have to reduce the emissions from our energy production. And fusion is one way of doing that without having the negative side effects that you do get from other nuclear energy.

Some of the problems with fission, which is the nuclear energy that we're using now, which basically has, you take very complicated elements such as uranium and plutonium, and then you cause them to break apart, and that breaking apart creates energy. There are some safety elements that we have seen. If you stop the cooling of the reaction, you can have explosions like they had at Chernobyl.

For the first time ever, the Soviet Union admits it has had a nuclear accident. Massive quantities of radiation have apparently been released in an accident at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine. 56 people were killed. 300,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area. Another 9,300 are expected to die from cancers caused by the huge radiation release. from cancers caused by the huge radiation release. There's also the problem with the waste because the fission reaction does not go down to nothing that's not radioactive. There's still going to be radioactive waste

at the end of a fission reaction. So you have to deal with that waste. In a fusion reaction, you don't have the safety concerns because once the heat is turned off, the process stops. So you don't have to worry about having a runaway reaction like you

would at say like what happened at the chernobyl right yeah you turn off the lasers or you turn off the heat so you would not and then it would just stop so you wouldn't and there'd be no radioactive waste left over very little radioactive waste left over so you would not have the waste problem and just to be clear we're talking about f here. Is it fair for me to say that the way that this energy is produced is like the opposite of fission, like fusion, nuclear fusion is produced the opposite way? Yes, you can think about it that way. They're both getting energy from the underlying atomic structures. So the energy comes from the same place, but it is the opposite way of getting that energy. One is to break it apart and the other is to join it together.

And one more point for clarity. The idea is that, like you said, with fission, there's the potential for waste and that it can be unsafe. And that doesn't exist with fusion, right? I know Jennifer Granholm basically said the possibility is a zero carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society. Yes, you would not have the problems with waste or you would not have the safety problems with fusion. You'd also have a much more readily available source of fuel, because right now we have to mine the uranium in Saskatchewan, for example, there's a lot of uranium mining.

Well, with fusion, because it's just using hydrogen atoms, you would can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people

and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together.

To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. There has been this debate raging, right, about nuclear power. Does this complicate that debate? You know, as you mentioned, there are problems with it. It causes waste and it can be unsafe. And so does this new discovery complicate the debate that people have been having? It complicates the debate to a certain extent, but not overall. For one, there are a lot of the concerns people have around the safety and the waste.

Yes, it does reduce those problems. But the other problems, some of the problems we have with fusion is just the timeline. This is just a scientific breakthrough. It's not a commercialization. This is just a scientific breakthrough. It is not a commercialization. So we're unlikely to get nuclear fusion commercially in the market for decades, possibly. Why so long? Why decades? It feels like such a long time.

Well, this is just a proof of concept. They have to make a commercially viable way of this providing power. And there are upwards of like 50 companies trying to find different ways but no one has yet been able to demonstrate a commercially viable way of of creating fusion and getting the energy from it and then once you do that you then have to build all these facilities and just to give you an example from in fission where the proof of concept of that was in 1938 when the first fission reaction happened at the University of Chicago. And the first commercially available nuclear reactor was not until 1957. And arguably, it wasn't until the 1970s when nuclear energy became quite widespread.

So it took decades for this to happen. Now, we do have the impotence of climate change and the need to decarbonize our energy. But we still have to be able to have a commercially viable system that can be produced, that can be built, that people know how to build it. You have to have the suppliers, you have to have all the equipment to be built. And that is going to be very difficult in order to build up the supply chain. And then it can take six years, even now, to build a new nuclear reactor. OPG in Ontario, for example, just broke ground on a new nuclear reactor a couple weeks ago. And it is not expected to be operational in 2028 in the best case scenario.

So it takes a long time to build these things. And we still don't have a viable design that we can give to a company and say, build this. We don't have that yet. So in the meantime, then, this debate around nuclear power, nuclear fission, it's still raging. I know this is something that you've been hitting on during this conversation, but can you unpack that a little bit more for me? Why people are saying that we should be pulling away from nuclear fission power and focusing more on, let's say, wind and solar energy. And then there are people on the other side that say, no, like nuclear fission power is a great interim solution for us. Yeah, I'll try to provide both perspectives. And I try to come down in the middle. In these debates, I call them religious. They're very, people have very, very strong

feelings about nuclear energy. It's so strong, I find it religious. They're very, people have very, very strong feelings about nuclear energy. It's so strong, I find it very hard to navigate because they're so dogmatic on both sides. Yes, you're right. And it becomes very difficult for people outside the industry to really make up their idea because they're getting such strong opinions and in many cases, very mean opinions from various people whenever you say one thing or the other. Yeah. So from nuclear power, the benefits of nuclear power, of the current nuclear fission systems

that we have, is we do know they work. We've been using them for decades. They provide a lot of power in a small area. So you can build, for example, at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, which is the largest in the world, that is six gigawatts of power, which is about six of all of Ontario's generating capacity just in this one plant. And it can be used 90% of the time, assuming there are no breakdowns. And it does not emit any, there are no emissions from the production of energy at the nuclear plant. So you do have that non-emitting source of large amounts of power,

which is very beneficial thing to have. If you live in Quebec or BC, where you have large hydropower, it may not be as important because you can have those large hydro dams. But for a place like Ontario, where there are fewer options, I could see why people would think that is very beneficial. On the negative side, you do have the safety concerns. And while a lot of the nuclear industry tries to downplay a lot of safety concerns, and Canada's had a very good safety record on nuclear power.

There are case studies and examples that people can point to where nuclear power has gone wrong. And the other part, you do have the nuclear waste issue. And the waste from a nuclear power plant will be radioactive for tens of thousands of years. So you need to find a safe way to store it. And right now, no country has been able to find a good way of storing nuclear waste. Canada is looking into building a deep geological repository up in the northern Ontario in the Canadian Shield, which is theoretically a very good place for a long-term

waste because it's very geologically inert. But obviously, people don't want that in their backyard. So we still need to create a system for nuclear waste. And nuclear power is very expensive. A lot of the plants that are currently operating can be operated cheaply now once they're built. The evidence of new nuclear construction in the rest of the world has not been very good. In many cases you're seeing in France and Finland in the UK, we're seeing projects that are going two to three times over budget that are delayed by sometimes up to a a really appealing solution down the road, we're talking about generating electricity with it, right? down the road, we're talking about generating electricity with it, right?

Like it's not a replacement for other kinds of energy that we are currently very reliant on. Yes, it's important to realize that we're talking about electricity here. That's what we're talking about today. So nuclear fusion would be used to produce electricity, which is important to recognize that only 20% of the energy Canadians use is electricity. The rest of the energy we get is, for example, in transportation or in heating, comes from fossil fuels. So regardless of what technology we decide to use in the future, in terms of reducing our emissions or providing that electricity,

we will still need to electrify a lot of our economy. One of the things I worry about with nuclear fusion, we just can't wait. We can't say, well, our fusion is going to come in a couple of decades, so let's not do anything. So I think it's important that we do what we can now. And regardless, we're going to have to electrify our economy or greater electrify our economy. So we need to start converting. We need to start converting our transportation to electric or hydrogen, I suppose, as well as convert our buildings over from fossil heating. And to redo our entire energy system based on an extremely expensive technology could be a problem.

That could actually cost more than using other technologies such as wind and solar or a combination of technologies. Right at this moment, and will be definitely for the foreseeable future, wind and solar is the cheapest generating technology around. And I would be surprised if a fusion reactor could come in cheaper than wind and solar. So I guess then, if it's going to take decades to get this technology to where it needs to be, by then, won't we have converted so much of our energy infrastructure to renewables? It will probably be useful after we've converted to a zero carbon energy system. Because we don't

want to, we can't also stop once we do it. Once we, in the 2050s, when we hopefully achieve our zero carbon energy system and we're net zero, we will still need to build new things. There will still be new energy demand coming up. We'll still have plants that are retiring, that will get old. And nuclear fusion could be, then could play a role when you are replacing some of these plants or when it comes to expanding energy needs. you are replacing some of these plants or when it comes to expanding energy needs. So nuclear fusion could play a role in the future, but I doubt it would play a major role in meeting our 2050 net zero target, which we have to meet if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

All right. Richard, thank you so much for this. This was really interesting, and I feel like I understand this a little bit better now. Thank you. Thank you so much for this. This was really interesting. And I feel like I understand this a little bit better now. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.