It may be that when historians look back on December 2023, the most important story may not be anything from Israel or Gaza or Harvard or Penn or MIT. Instead, it could be a story that didn't even make the Wall Street Journal, and that the New York Times covered with a brief article on the bottom of page A22 under the headline "Three Laser Fusion Research Hubs Picked by Energy Department."
An Energy Department press release has the details:
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $42 million for a program that will establish multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary hubs to advance foundational inertial fusion energy (IFE) science and technology, building on the groundbreaking work of the Department's researchers into harnessing the power of the sun and stars. The hubs will be led by researchers at Colorado State University, the University of Rochester, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where last year a team successfully achieved fusion ignition for the first time, proving that creating energy from fusion is possible. Fusion has the potential to provide abundant, reliable, and non-carbon-emitting energy, and President Biden has set a goal of demonstrating a proof-of-concept for several different types of fusion power plants in 10 years as part of the effort to achieve the Administration's ambitious climate and energy goals....
Inertial confinement fusion has attracted greater interest and attention due to breakthroughs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, where on December 5, 2022, researchers achieved scientific breakeven, meaning more energy was released from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. The researchers have since repeated the result three times.
In general I am not a big believer in government spending. However, because the general fusion technology with peaceful energy applications also has deadly military applications, it probably makes sense to have some government involvement to make sure that our enemies don't get control of the technology and use it to kill us or our allies. And given that the government is spending tons of money already on research and on combating climate change, allocating some of it in this direction probably makes some sense. In the government context, $42 million is a small sum, and it's worth asking why not invest even more on this and other fusion-energy related projects.
It's also worth noting that, as with the Covid-19 "Warp speed" vaccine project, government research spending works best when it partners with private institutions, including for-profit institutions. If fusion technology is as promising as it appears to be, private capital will also rise, and winners stand to make a lot of money as compensation for the risk of being early on a technological bet (getting paid for taking the chance that they will lose all or most of their money if it doesn't work out). Here, from the Energy Department, are the lists of who is involved:
Inertial Fusion Energy-Consortium on Laser-Plasma Interaction Research hub
- University of Rochester (leader)
- Ergodic LLC
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- Xcimer Energy Corp.
Inertial Fusion Science and Technology hub
- Colorado State University (leader)
- Cornell University
- General Atomics
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Marvel Fusion
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Texas A&M University
- U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Xcimer Energy Corp.
National Science and Technology Accelerated Research for Fusion Innovation & Reactor Engineering hub
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (leader)
- Focused Energy
- Fraunhofer ILT
- General Atomics
- Leonardo Electronics US Inc.
- Livermore Lab Foundation
- Longview Fusion Energy
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Savannah River National Laboratory
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Texas A&M University
- TRUMPF
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of California, San Diego
- University of Oklahoma
- University of Rochester
- Xcimer Energy Corp.
The only entity involved in all three hubs is Xcimer. There aren't a lot of publicly traded companies involved. Leonardo trades on the Milan Stock Exchange and Fluor, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has announced an engineering and construction partnership deal with Longview Fusion Energy Systems. A lot of the "clean tech" energy investment has been smoke and mirrors driven by politically connected venture capitalists, state pension-fund capitalism, and wishful thinking. And it may be this is all just a science-fiction fantasy story. But my sense is that the market, or at least the general public, doesn't yet fully appreciate or value the chance that nuclear, and particularly fusion, will take a profile alongside wind and solar in the future energy mix.