An Energy Industry Game Changer, or Wishful Thinking?

By Frank Rovella
Lockheed Martin recently announced that they are moving forward with the development of a new type of fusion reactor. If you follow the industry, you’ll know that there are fusion research projects underway, across the globe. Most are small scale with limited budgets however; others involve some real heavyweights with vast resources and government sponsorship. They include MIT, Sandia National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the ITER consortium in France, and many more. When you’re talking about developing an alternative to fossil fuels, environmentalists will insist that it’s all about CO2 emissions though they are insignificant in the USA due to the EPA. Ultimately, what is driving the fusion train is efficiency. When you’re talking power generation, it’s all about heating steam to turn a turbine, to turn a generator. At the end of the day, it’s about BTUs, and whoever can put the least in and get the most out, wins.

Lockheed Martin CFR

The concept of fusion has been around since the 1920s; with the promise of a clean and inexpensive method to produce almost limitless amounts of electricity. It has become for the energy industry a quest for the Holy Grail. Apart from the obvious, understanding why development is so compelling for countless investors and governments, it’s necessary to look at what our current state of power generation requires to survive.

East River Generating Station NYC

Most people will agree that the current methods of power generation are untenable; their supply chains are complex, far-reaching, and can be disrupted by either natural events or legislation. How tied we are to them cannot be understated, for example; 30% of all power generated in the US is from natural gas, 37% from coal, 19% from nuclear, and the remaining from a combination of renewables.

The lion's share, natural gas, and coal require mining and extraction, and lots of it. The US coal industry alone represents over 250,000 jobs while the booming natural gas industry includes over 570,000 jobs and rising. That’s a big footprint, and it’s still not enough, in the US and across the globe capacity is being outstripped by demand, utilities are scrambling to get new facilities online, but it’s all reiterations of old technology.  It’s not hard to make a case for fusion, and quite obvious why so many people and governments think fusion is the future.  This is reflected in the scale of investment in technology that is still considered by some to be a generation away. Efforts currently underway represent billions of dollars, the largest of which is the ITER in France. This project includes 35 countries; its developers estimate that it will have a power output of only 500 MW when completed, which is expected by 2019, with full power output expected between 2020-2040. Its sheer size is unprecedented, the ITER covers 104 acres in France, and its Tokamak containment system will weigh 23,000 tons. As it is a research project, it is not without problems. The ITER has been plagued with delays and cost overruns, in fact, once finished it will have a total cost in excess of $50 billion, ten times what was originally planned.

Inside the ITER Tokamak Reactor

ITER in Southern France

ITER is an extreme example, but others are no less complex, which is what makes Lockheed Martin’s entry into the fusion arena so interesting. Their first unit will be called the “Compact Fusion Reactor” (CFR). It will be approximately the size of a jet engine. Compact means it will cost less and take less time to test and develop. That’s pretty good for starters; it will also produce enough BTUs to generate upwards of 100 MW of power while using only 44 lbs. (20 Kg) of fuel annually. To put that into perspective, a truck-size power plant generating enough electricity for 80,000 homes, so what’s not to love? Of course, there are a lot of skeptics; myself included, and for good reason, just like my mother told me, “if it sounds too good to be true, usually is.”

Over the past 20 years, there has been a lot of new technology hitting the mainstream, especially in the area of alternative energy. Getting grants and investments for development means you have to exhibit or project progress, which needs to be quantified in the most persuasive manner possible.

Many have written that the CFR is just that, a vehicle to crank up Lockheed Martin stock. It’s also hard to believe that with all the research going on all over the world that a relatively unknown and new group can start from scratch and have a working model in 10 years.

Let’s just say for a minute that I drop my Yankee skepticism and look at the other side of the coin. Very few details have been released about this project, which helps to fuel the widespread disbelief. One thing to consider is that this project is under the Skunk Works umbrella, and they have a pretty good track record when it comes to keeping secrets. Moreover, the original intent for this was for aerospace applications, in particular, the space program. Fortunately, it just happens to be scalable, and could also find a home in aircraft, commercial shipping, naval applications, as well as general power generation.

So why are so many other projects struggling while the CFR seems to speed past the field?  It begins with the programs director Thomas McGuire, in 2000 as a grad student at MIT McGuire was tasked with finding a way to get to Mars quickly, fusion was the obvious choice. He began to research the various fusion technologies under development.  Through his research, Dr. McGuire claims that by combining key features he and his team have been able to answer many of the problems that have beset other projects. As a result, they have developed something he says is totally new.

To understand how new, we’ll have to look at current fusion technology, keep in mind that the entire fusion process relies on containing plasma and harvesting the heat to make steam. The plasma from a fusion reaction is really hot, hundreds of millions of degrees. Right now, you may be able to see the most well-known fusion reactor, the sun.

The first major hurdle is to get a fusion reaction started; there are a number of methods but for the sake of brevity, I’ll focus on containing the resultant plasma. The most studied and developed method is magnetic containment. This method has shown the most promise, it includes the previously mentioned Tokamak and over 170 other fusion reactor projects currently under development.

In magnetic containment, the plasma is contained in a ring or donut-shaped vacuum vessel that is maintained by external pumps.  The magnetic containment field consists of two sets of coil systems, toroidal and poloidal; they create vertical and horizontal directional fields. Developing these systems into a practical method has been a monumental task. And this is just one type of containment, other methods include Stellarator, Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX), Magnetic Mirror, and many more.  However, magnetic containment is only one grouping; there is also Magnetic Pinches, Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, Magnetized Target Fusion, Beam fusion, Bubble Fusion, and the hypothetical Cold Fusion.  The problem with the Tokamak and other methods of magnetic containment is the massive cost and extreme complexity of the system. In this, the CFR uses a radically different approach, instead of using containment in a ring configuration; it creates it within a chamber.  McGuire explains that the Tokamak is like a bike tire expanding into air while the CFR is more like a tube that expands into an ever-stronger wall. The magnetic field created in the CFR is regulated by a self-tuning feedback mechanism. This means that the farther out into the chamber the plasma goes; the stronger the magnetic field becomes to contain it.

The Lockheed Martin CFR

If the Skunk Works team can pull this off power generation as we know it, and a large part of the world's economy will change forever. Countries that lack natural resources will no longer be at the mercy of outside sources. Certainly, the change to come to coal and natural gas extraction will be drastic. Wrangling over pipelines and power plant locations will mostly be a thing of the past. For smaller economies and developing nations, it will mean a level playing field and a better standard of life for everyone.

Like it or not, we are inexorably reliant on electricity, it powers our economies, livelihoods, and is the backbone of the modern world.  Fusion power will eventually become a reality whether it’s the CFR the Tokamak or some yet unknown method is anyone’s guess. However, without some form of improvement for power generation, we can be assured that our society will stagnate. Fusion isn’t just about cheaper cleaner power, its about the future.

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