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Raphael Thys
A European consortium, EuroFusion, has taken a crucial step on the long road to commercially viable nuclear fusion.
The consortium just announced the start of a five-year "conceptual design" phase for its DEMOnstration power plant (DEMO), a press statement reveals.
This means nuclear fusion scientists are starting design work on a European demonstration power station that they hope will finally enable net nuclear fusion energy — the much-hyped method to end our reliance on fossil fuels by providing practically limitless energy.
DEMO nuclear fusion plant goes into the conceptual design phase
Nuclear fusion is the reaction used by the sun and stars to produce energy. It takes place when two atoms smash against each other to form a heavier nucleus, giving off massive amounts of energy in the process. To date, scientists have largely experimented with circular nuclear fusion reactors, called tokamaks, that use powerful magnets to contain the burning plasma required for the reaction to take place.
EuroFusion's DEMO power plant is planned to be a 300 to 500 megawatt tokamak, which the consortium described in its statement as "a first-of-its-kind facility that represents the next technological step after the global ITER fusion experiment."
The consortium explained in its statement that DEMO's conceptual design phase "charts a route of scientific and engineering research from the basic science at current devices, all the way to designing the demonstration fusion power plant DEMO, capable of net electricity production shortly after the middle of the century." The organization specifically set out the date 2054 as its goal for delivering commercial fusion energy.
Aside from aiming to demonstrate the net production of 300 to 500 hundred megawatts of electricity, DEMO will also demonstrate new innovations such as remote maintenance and tritium breeding. Tritium breeding will allow operators to produce tritium fusion fuel on-site and will be a crucial component for commercial fusion operations in the future.