This is rapidly changing, and regulators are now investigating how deployment might unfold in the real world. Until recently, fusion has been seen primarily as a scientific experiment, not as an engineering challenge. The huge energy potential of nuclear fuel is currently mitigated by the engineering challenges of converting that energy into a useful form. Increasing the amount of uranium spent in our current fleet is possible - it’s an ongoing sphere of work - but it poses enormous engineering challenges. Used fuel still contains about 96 percent of its total uranium and about a fifth of its fissile Uranium-235 content. In addition, not all of the uranium in the fuel is burned.
The overall efficiency of the cycle is less than 40 percent. This steam drives a turbine connected to an electric power generator, which produces electricity. This is what nuclear power plants do - they harness the heat generated during nuclear fission reactions to make steam. Instead, we have to engineer a complex system that can control the nuclear fission chain reaction and convert the generated energy into more useful forms. But we cannot convert all of that energy into useful forms like heat and electric power. The complete fission of one kilogram of Uranium-235 - the fissile component of nuclear fuel - can generate about 77 terajoules. The same is true of nuclear fission, which is the reaction inside current nuclear power plants. In doing so, the fusion reaction outputs enough energy to light just 14 incandescent bulbs for an hour. In other words, the experiment used as much energy as the typical Canadian household does in two days. This energy input, needed to power 192 lasers, came from the electric power grid. The reported fusion net gain actually required about 300 megajoules of energy input, which was not included in the energy gain calculation. The efficiency of a potential fusion energy power plant remains to be seen.
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We also teach our students how to navigate the treacherous terrain from lab-based findings to real-world applications. We are professors of sustainable and renewable energy engineering at Carleton University, where we research alternative energy technologies and systems that can move us to a low-carbon future.
While this achievement is indeed historic, it’s important to pause and reflect on the way ahead for fusion energy. For the first time, more energy was released from a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it. Department of Energy reported a major scientific breakthrough in nuclear fusion science in December 2022.
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