The U.S. intends to outline the first global strategy for commercializing nuclear fusion power at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. This could be a major milestone in scientists’ decades long quest to develop and deploy this carbon free source of electricity. The COP28 is being held from the 30th of November to the 12th of December at Expo City in Dubai. The conference has been held annually since the first U.N. climate agreement was signed in 1992. The COP conferences are intended for governments to reach agreement on policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change.
John Kerry is the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change. He plans to announce the news on Monday during a tour of the Commonwealth Fusion Systems facility near Boston. Sources say that the COP28 summit will serve as the "starting gun for international cooperation" on the commercialization of nuclear fusion.
He said, “I will have much more to say on the United States's vision for international partnerships for an inclusive fusion energy future at COP28.” He went on to say that decades of U.S. investment in fusion research have been instrumental in transforming nuclear fusion from an experiment to “an emerging climate solution.”
Kerry will be joined on his tour of the Commonwealth facility by Claudio Descalzi, the CEO of Italian energy giant Eni. Eni is pursuing four fusion power pilot projects of its own.
The U.S. State Department did not respond to requests from the media for comments on Kerry’s announcement, or on the fusion commercialization strategy that will be outlined at this year’s COP28 summit.
The U.S. effort comes less than a year after researchers at Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility in California used fusion to achieve "net energy gain" for the first time. This is a major breakthrough that demonstrated that fusion ignition is attainable in a controlled environment.
Existing nuclear fission technology splits heavy atoms apart to generate electricity. Nuclear fusion does just the opposite, merging light atoms together to generate energy. There are two main approaches to fusion production which are internal confinement and magnetic confinement technology. Commonwealth utilizes the magnetic confinement approach.
Many challenges remain in the quest for fusion. To scale up the appropriate technology, scientists must be able to use fusion to generation more than one hundred percent of the energy required for the ignition reaction. This is a ratio known as the “Q” value.
The DoE experiment carried out last year with laser energy generated one hundred and twenty percent of ignition reaction value which was a net gain. However, experts noted that it is not high enough to produce commercial fusion. Producing sufficient energy by fusion may take years as well as billions of dollars in international investment.
Scientists have also achieved only a few instances of fusion ignition. They will need to generate many continuous ignitions per minute to generate enough energy for commercial-scale fusion power.
The number of companies that received investments for fusion technology research has increased from thirty-three to forty-three in the last year. This is according to recent data from the Fusion Industry Association. Efforts span more than a dozen countries including Germany, Japan, China, and Australia.