Speaker 1: Fusion is going to change everything we know about energy
Speaker 1: right well, not so fast, and I mean that literally,
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen fast. Today we talked about
Speaker 1: the new fusion breakthrough and why it could be a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal in the energy industry in the very
Speaker 1: distant future. Hello, and welcome back once again to partsper Billion,
Speaker 1: the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz,
Speaker 1: So strap on your thinking caps everyone. This is going
Speaker 1: to be a pretty science heavy episode today. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the future of energy in light of a major
Speaker 1: scientific breakthrough. Scientists the Department of Energies Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Speaker 1: in California announced this week that they created a net
Speaker 1: energy positive fusion reaction, or in other words, a fusion
Speaker 1: reaction that produced more energy than it took to create.
Speaker 1: After the announcement, you might have heard some folks saying
Speaker 1: that this could be in a future without energy scarcity
Speaker 1: and without carbon emissions. Pretty exciting prospect. But as you'll
Speaker 1: hear today, that future is actually pretty far off, a
Speaker 1: lot further than many policymakers and Joe Biden in particular,
Speaker 1: would be willing to admit. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion with Bloomberg News energy reporter Will Wade, and
Speaker 1: of course I started off by asking Will to give
Speaker 1: us a little science lesson and explain exactly how fusion
Speaker 1: really works. Nuclear fusion, it's an idea that's been around
Speaker 1: since the fifties. You're probably familiar with nuclear fission. That's
Speaker 1: what we use in nuclear power plants. And what happens
Speaker 1: there is you have a large atom and it literally splits,
Speaker 1: and in that process it releases a whole lot of energy.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing we saw in the first nuclear
Speaker 1: bombs back in the nineties. So nuclear fusion is the
Speaker 1: process that happens inside stars. It's inside our sun. And
Speaker 1: what happens is you have small atoms. In this case,
Speaker 1: they've used two isotopes of hydrogen and you smash them
Speaker 1: together and they fuse into something else. So the hydrogen
Speaker 1: becomes helium and in the process that also releases a
Speaker 1: lot of that gy So the concept has been around
Speaker 1: for decades. It's been one of those theoretical things that
Speaker 1: people have said, we think this will work. So what
Speaker 1: happened that Lawrence Livermore Labs was they call it net
Speaker 1: energy game so they smashed atoms together and they used
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of lasers. In fact, they use some
Speaker 1: of the most powerful lasers on Earth. And it took
Speaker 1: them about two mega joules of energy to trigger this reaction,
Speaker 1: and when the fusion reaction happened, it released three mega
Speaker 1: jules of energy. So what that means is more energy
Speaker 1: came out than came in, and that's what they've been
Speaker 1: trying to achieve for decades. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that surprised me, and I think that I learned from
Speaker 1: your reporting and other reporting on this is that fusion
Speaker 1: itself is not difficult. I mean, of course it's very difficult,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that we just learned how to do.
Speaker 1: Fusion is is something that's been around for a while.
Speaker 1: It's this concept of a fusion reaction that generates energy
Speaker 1: instead of takes up energy. That's the real, the big breakthrough. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: the thing with the fusion reaction is that it's hard
Speaker 1: to get it going, and it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: energy to trigger a fusion reaction. A lot of times
Speaker 1: it uses a lot of heat. In this case, I
Speaker 1: think it was about three million degrees centigrade. And that
Speaker 1: heat is what sort of helps the atoms fuse together. Well,
Speaker 1: I will say I grew up in twoson Arizona, so
Speaker 1: three million doesn't sound that you know, doesn't sound that
Speaker 1: bad to me anyway. Um So, So the idea is
Speaker 1: that it takes energy to get the fusion reaction going,
Speaker 1: but if it is releasing more energy, that means you
Speaker 1: can sustain the reaction. So if it takes two mega
Speaker 1: jewels to get it going and you've got three mega
Speaker 1: jewels coming out, that means you can use the two
Speaker 1: mega jewels in theory to keep it going, and it
Speaker 1: gives you a surplus mega jewel of energy which you
Speaker 1: can harvest and use for a commercial power plant. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the basic theory. You're gonna need a lot more
Speaker 1: gain than that, but that's the key idea. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the benefits of fusion versus fission. UM. I
Speaker 1: think we all know the downsides of fission, which is
Speaker 1: radioactive waste among other uh potential downsides, but they sounds
Speaker 1: like the main issue is that you create a lot
Speaker 1: of radioactive materials that are going to be radioactive for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. UM. I get a sense with fusion,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily the case. Do I have that right? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So with nuclear fission, we what we
Speaker 1: use now is uranium, and the fuel rods, once they've
Speaker 1: been used up, they're probably some of the most dangerous
Speaker 1: things on Earth. They're deadly for thousands of years. And
Speaker 1: our strategy right now is to seal them up in
Speaker 1: a big steel and concrete cask and it just sits there.
Speaker 1: So fusion doesn't do this. Fusion runs on hydrogen. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: is really safe. The byproduct in this case has been helium.
Speaker 1: Helium is safe. We don't have that leftover uranium that's
Speaker 1: super toxic. Now, it's not correct to say there's no waste.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of neutrons flying around, and neutrons
Speaker 1: will eventually leave some of the materials radioactive, but it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as dangerous as the toxic waste from new
Speaker 1: clear power plants now and we should also, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're you know, fusion sounds it sounds like could be
Speaker 1: cleaner and safer than fission, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that involves millions of degrees if temperature, it can't
Speaker 1: be totally safe, right, I mean, there are some risks
Speaker 1: here to nuclear fusion, right, Well, there's some risks, but
Speaker 1: it's not quite the same. Now, you've probably heard of
Speaker 1: meltdowns or something called the China syndrome, and that's because
Speaker 1: once you have a nuclear fission reaction going a nuclear
Speaker 1: power plant, it's hard to control. That's why they have
Speaker 1: water to keep it cool. That's why they have boron
Speaker 1: rods to sort of act as damping elements in the
Speaker 1: in the reactor core. That reaction is going and it's
Speaker 1: hard to control it. You could lose control of the
Speaker 1: reaction in a nuclear power plant. Now, fusion, if you remember,
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy to get it going. What
Speaker 1: that means is if you somehow lose control of the system,
Speaker 1: if something breaks down, that energy goes away, you lose
Speaker 1: control of the reaction. It shuts down. It shuts downs
Speaker 1: in like a fraction of a second, it goes away.
Speaker 1: It's not a problem that's really interesting. So it's almost
Speaker 1: like a fail safe pretty much. If if something goes
Speaker 1: wrong with a fusion power plant, the first thing that
Speaker 1: happens is it shuts itself down. Okay, let's blessedly move
Speaker 1: away from the science here and get to the public policy. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, so President Biden has said that he wants
Speaker 1: a working nuclear fusion reactor to be up and running
Speaker 1: in ten years from now. Um, based on your reporting,
Speaker 1: I get the sense that's a very aspirational goal, and
Speaker 1: that may be putting it kind. Is that possible ten
Speaker 1: years from now we'll see a reactor? Well, I'll say
Speaker 1: that it's okay for him to want that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's going to be possible. It's it's an
Speaker 1: aspirational goal. We've heard different things. When they announced its
Speaker 1: Energy Secretary Grant Home said yeah, we could do this
Speaker 1: in a decade, and then they brought out the head
Speaker 1: of Lawrence Livermore Labs, who is the scientist and not
Speaker 1: the politician and maybe knows a little bit more about it,
Speaker 1: and her reaction was decades. Maybe not five or six
Speaker 1: decades like we used to think, but decades. So it
Speaker 1: sounded like she was pouring a little cold water on that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can have it in a decade,
Speaker 1: but it's a nice target to shoot for, because if
Speaker 1: we can actually have a fusion power plant, it's not
Speaker 1: overstating it to say that this would solve a lot
Speaker 1: of the world's problems. It's abundance clean energy that runs
Speaker 1: around the clock. It's it's exactly what we need. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally I wanted to talk about the research
Speaker 1: aspect of this. And when I say research, I mean
Speaker 1: research funding. You reported that, you know, this breakthrough is
Speaker 1: going to kind of trigger a big increase in research
Speaker 1: dollars towards nuclear fusion. However, when I read that, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, you know, is this a zero sum game,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of potential energy projects that could
Speaker 1: yield you know, interesting results. I'm specifically thinking of, you know,
Speaker 1: batteries that could be used to make wind and solar
Speaker 1: more reliable and less intermittent um. Is the funding that's
Speaker 1: going to go towards nuclear fusion research, is it going
Speaker 1: to come from other areas of clean energy research? You know,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question. I don't know for sure, but
Speaker 1: my guests would be not so much. The people that
Speaker 1: are putting money into fusion are making long term bets,
Speaker 1: and it's a bit of a risk. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of a gamble. We don't know if it's going to
Speaker 1: work or how long it's going to take. The people
Speaker 1: that are putting money into batteries. That's a much shorter play.
Speaker 1: We see huge demand for batteries now. We can see
Speaker 1: the bands of the batteries that exist now, and we see,
Speaker 1: you know, plenty of interest in a new kind of battery,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of research going to new battery technologies.
Speaker 1: And if you can come up with a better battery,
Speaker 1: it's not as complicated a project as a nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: power plant, and you pretty much have a guaranteed market.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. I mean, yeah, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of renewable energy research. It's like a zero sum game,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like that's just not the case. There's
Speaker 1: room in the in the sandbox for everyone. I think
Speaker 1: people are just investing in energy period, instead of just thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this is the money I've got to allocate for renewable energy.
Speaker 1: The global energy markets have been completely upended since the
Speaker 1: war started almost a year ago, and there's just unlimited
Speaker 1: interest in trying to find new ways to either get
Speaker 1: more of the energy we have or new kinds of energy.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, that was Will Wade talking about the future.
Speaker 1: Thank you Will for joining us. Uh, let's hope we
Speaker 1: have more news here. In the future. Okay, and that's
Speaker 1: it for today's Parts per Billion. If you want more
Speaker 1: environmental news, check out our website news dot Bloomberg Law
Speaker 1: dot com. That website, once again is news dot Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Law dot com. Today's episode of Parts from Bilion was
Speaker 1: produced by myself, David Schultz. Partsber Billion was created by
Speaker 1: Jessica Combs and Rachel Dagle and is edited by Zack
Speaker 1: Sherwood and Renee Show and our executive producer is Josh Block.
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