3: Bring the Power of the Stars to Earth

Answer the key scientific questions and overcome enormous technical challenges to harness the power that fuels a star, realizing by the middle of this century a landmark scientific achievement by bringing fusion power to the U.S. electrical grid.

Other Information:

Executive Summary: We believe fusion will become a practical energy technology within three to four decades, through either magnetic confinement of plasmas or one of several inertial approaches. Over the next decade, we will resolve critical scientific uncertainties and select the most promising technical approach, including participating in an international burning plasma experiment called ITER. Detailed Commentary: When fusion power becomes a commercial reality, current national concerns over imported oil, rising gasoline prices, smokestack pollution, and other problems associated with our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels will largely disappear. We will have achieved energy independence. Fusion power plants will provide economical and abundant energy without greenhouse gas emissions, while creating manageable waste and little risk to public safety and health. Making fusion energy a part of our national energy solution is among the most ambitious scientific and engineering challenges of our era. The following are some of the major scientific questions we will answer: • Can we successfully control a burning plasma that shares the characteristic intensity and power of the sun? • How can we use nanoscale science to construct radically new materials that will withstand the temperatures and forces needed for commercial fusion power? • To what extent can we use scientific simulation to model the behavior of the fusion fuel that is found at the center of the sun—or in the confines of a functioning commercial prototype? Our ultimate success in answering these questions requires that we understand and control remarkably complex and dynamic phenomena occurring across a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. We must also develop materials, components, and systems that can withstand temperatures exceeding those that are typical of a star. The experiments required for a commercially viable fusion power technology constitute a complex scientific and engineering enterprise that must be sustained over several decades. We can now define the specific challenges that must be overcome, see promising approaches to addressing those challenges, and confidently anticipate the availability of even more powerful computational and experimental measurement capabilities. As an integral part of this Strategic Plan, and in Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year Outlook, we have identified the need for four future facilities to realize our Fusion Energy Sciences vision and to meet the science challenges described in the following pages. One of the facilities, ITER, is a near-term priority. ITER is an international collaboration to build the first fusion science experiment capable of producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction, called a “burning plasma.” It is the next essential and critical step on the path toward demonstrating the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. All four facilities are included in our Fusion Energy Sciences Strategic Timeline at the end of this chapter and in the facilities chart in Chapter 7 (page 93), and they are discussed in detail in the Twenty-Year Outlook. Our Strategies: Given the substantial scientific and technological uncertainties that we know exist, we will employ a portfolio strategy that explores a variety of magnetic and inertial confinement approaches and leads to the most promising commercial fusion concept. Advanced computational modeling will be central to guiding and designing experiments that cannot be readily investigated in the laboratory, such as testing the agreement between theory and experiment and exploring innovative designs for fusion plants. To ensure the highest possible scientific return on limited resources, we will extensively engage with and leverage other DOE programs and the investments of other agencies in such areas as materials science, ion beam physics, and laser physics. Large-scale experimental facilities will be necessary to test approaches for self-heated (burning) fusion plasmas, for inertial fusion experiments, and for testing materials and components under extreme conditions. Where appropriate, the rewards, risks, and costs of major facilities will be shared through international collaborations. The overall Fusion Energy Sciences effort will be organized around a set of four broad goals. Our Timeline and Indicators of Success: Our commitment to the future, and to the realization of Goal 3: Bring the Power of the S tars to Earth, is not only reflected in our strategies, but also in our Key Indicators of Success, below, and our Strategic Timeline for Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) at the end of this chapter. Our FES Strategic Timeline charts a collection of important, illustrative milestones, representing planned progress within each strategy. These milestones, while subject to the rapid pace of change and uncertainties that belie all science programs, reflect our latest perspectives on the future— what we hope to accomplish and when we hope to accomplish it— over the next 20 years and beyond. Following the science milestones, toward the bottom of the timeline, we have identified the required major new facilities. These facilities, described in greater detail in the DOE Office of Science companion report, Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year Outlook, reflect time-sequencing that is based on the general priority of the facility, as well as critical-path relationships to research and corresponding science milestones. Additionally, the Office of Science has identified Key Indicators of Success, designed to gauge our overall progress toward achieving Goal 3. These select indicators, identified below, are representative long-term measures against which progress can be evaluated over time. The specific features and parameters of these indicators, as well as definitions of success, can be found on the web at www.science.doe.gov/ measures. Key Indicators of Success: • Progress in developing a predictive capability for key aspects of burning plasmas, using advances in theory and simulation benchmarked against a comprehensive experimental database of stability, transport, waveparticle interaction, and edge effects. • Progress in demonstrating enhanced fundamental understanding of magnetic confinement and in improving the basis for future burning plasma experiments through research on magnetic confinement configuration optimization. • Progress in developing the fundamental understanding and predictability of high energy density plasma physics, including potential energy producing applications.

Objective(s):

3.1: Fusion Energy

3.2: Plasma Behavior

3.3: Practical Fusion Energy Systems

3.4: New Materials, Components, and Technologies

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