#USA will have cheap UNLIMITED #energy in 15 years and it could come to the #UK
THE US is on the verge of perfecting fusion which will produce unlimited green energy in just 15 years which could mark the end of mankind’s need for expensive fossil fuels, it has been revealed this week.
On Friday, scientists at MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a private company, announced that they will be working together and the US could have completely green energy within two decades.
The collaborators believe they are on the verge of breaking the code of nuclear fusion.
Fusion is the energy source of the universe, which powers our sun and the distant stars.
Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said: “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change.
“We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”
But the collaborators working on the project think they have found a new way to make it work.
Their system uses a new high-temperature superconductor which they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor which produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.
The company has attracted $50 million in support of this project from the Italian energy company Eni.
Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice-president for research, said: “At the heart of today’s news is a big idea — a credible, viable plan to achieve net positive energy for fusion.
“If we succeed, the world’s energy systems will be transformed. We’re extremely excited about this.”
Fusion represents a zero-carbon, combustion-free source of energy.
Until this day, every fusion experiment has operated on an energy deficit, making it useless as a form of electricity.
Nuclear fusion, however, has almost no downsides.
It does not put carbon into the atmosphere like the burning of fossil fuels or generate radioactive waste like nuclear fission, which is the technology in current nuclear power plants.
One problem, however, with fusion has always been heat.
Fusion produces temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun so solid materials melt, ruining any potential for a power plant.
Prof Howard Wilson, a plasma physicist at York University who works on different fusion projects, said: “The exciting part of this is the high-field magnets.”
Wilson, however, wasn’t sure how MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems will be able to hit their 15-year timeframe.
The collaborators breakthrough happened because they were able to use a new type of superconductor to produce small, powerful magnets which is a key component of fusion reactors.
The magnets create a field to hold the fusion reaction in place without it touching anything solid, therefore subsequently solving the meltdown problem.
In the past, however, it took a huge amount of energy to power the magnets.
The new magnets created by the collaborators are much smaller and need less energy.
This means that, for the first time, their system produces more energy than it consumes.
