How a US fusion breakthrough left Britain scrambling to catch up
Howard Mustoe
6 min read
American efforts at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have repeatedly achieved ‘ignition’, or net energy gain from nuclear fusion - David Butow/Corbis via Getty Images
The successful experiment was “a real physics milestone”, the founder and chief executive of First Light Fusion says.
For the second time in seven months, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California had generated more energy from the fusion of two atoms than was required to trigger the reaction – a critical milestone.
The second experiment demonstrated that the breakthrough was repeatable. The promise of commercial nuclear fusion – the Holy Grail of clean energy – had moved closer.
But the breakthrough also demonstrated just how far the US is racing ahead – threatening to leave British start-ups such as Oxford-based First Light in the dust.
The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore, the lab which made the breakthrough, has received funding of about $3.5bn from Washington.
What is more, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act last year included $1.5bn of funding for green energy science, including fusion.
While Britain drew up a fusion strategy under Boris Johnson in 2021, it has fallen by the wayside since he left Downing Street.
There are fears that the US threatens to become a vortex for fusion funding, pulling global investment away from other ventures elsewhere in the world.
Warrick Matthews, managing director of Britain’s Tokamak Energy, says: “It is arguably simpler to raise capital in the US than it is in the UK”
British companies are now racing to demonstrate the effectiveness of their own fusion technologies in a bid to attract investors while they still can.
If realised at scale, nuclear fusion could be a crucial driver of the world’s shift towards clean energy. The reaction’s only byproduct alongside energy is harmless helium gas.
In fusion, deuterium and tritium, two types of hydrogen with extra neutrons, are heated to millions of degrees to the point that they fuse, releasing helium and lots of energy.
The latest breakthrough in the US involves what is known as ignition, where more energy is produced from fusion than is used to kick-start the reaction.
Ignition first occurred in December, but scientists at the state-run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California managed to get even more energy out of the process in an experiment last month.
The equivalent of about one kilowatt hour was delivered in the reaction, according to reports, which is enough to power an oven for half an hour.
It is thought to be the fourth time US scientists have managed ignition, raising hopes of bringing the energy source to the grid at a time when dependable, carbon-free power has never been more in demand.
The US Department of Energy called it “a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power”.
There are two broad approaches to triggering fusion: one using magnets; and the other firing lasers or projectiles, known as inertial confinement.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s breakthrough came using the inertial confinement method.
First Light is also pursuing this method. But Hawker warns that a lack of support from government and industry means businesses like his are fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
“We have great academic excellence in inertial fusion in this country. But we don’t have a big facility or a big project or a coordinated effort,” he says.
“All of our academic collaborators get by on an absolute shoestring. I think there needs to be more funding for inertial fusion”
The return on investment could be enormous.
Hawker estimates that the world will want up to 10,000 fusion plants by 2050.
“How much clean power would the world buy? The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is as much as is physically possible to build.”
First Light has developed a method of triggering inertial fusion using a 22-metre gas gun that fires a 100g projectile at 6.5km/second – about twenty times the speed of sound – at a pellet containing tritium and deuterium.
He wants to develop power plants that repeat the process every 30 seconds, with every pellet generating enough power to fuel the average UK home for more than two years.
Referencing the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory experiment, Hawker says: “The final step is exactly the same between our process and that process. So this gives us huge, huge confidence that we’re on the right track, because the core physics is exactly the same.“
First Light will soon build its own ignition demonstrator to show investors.
He wants to build a pilot plant by the mid-2030s and a full commercial plant by the end of the next decade offering power at as little as $45 per megawatt hour, a similar timeframe to his competition.
But to capture the market opportunity, start-ups like his need continued support to develop the technology.
Investment in Britain’s fusion industry to date has largely focused start-ups using the alternative method, magnetic-driven fusion.
“I don’t think we should take away from magnetic fusion,” Hawker says. “But if [funding is] 100 to one at the moment, maybe we just add another nine or another 20 or something just to even out.”
Managing director Matthews says: “Of course, there’s a degree of competition. Our investors will want us to have a degree of competition.”
The company, which is backed by the US and UK governments, has developed a device that last year hit 100 million degrees celsius, the threshold for sustaining fusion.
British efforts in the global fusion race have been centred on Joint European Torus project at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxford
Breakthroughs like reaching this high temperature threshold mean “the UK is in a pole position on the grid right now,” he argues.
However, Matthews says continued investment is crucial to stop Britain falling behind international rivals.
“We all know it’s easy to get overtaken if you don’t continue to invest.”
Scientists point to the vast sums the US can invest in its early-stage research from the White House’s Inflation Reduction Act but also the huge resources of its Department for Energy, which had a $149bn budget last year.
Nor is the technology cheap to develop.
“Fusion is very hard,” says Mathews. “When you even talk about controlling hot burning plasma, over 100 million degrees, most people would get the fact that yeah, that’s pretty hard.”
And while recent breakthroughs around ignition in the US are hugely significant in the quest for commercial fusion, all agree that there are still hard yards ahead.
Hawker says: “It’s like lighting the fire, right? We’ve lit the kindling, and now you need to build the rest of the fire.”
A spokesman for the Government said: “The UK aims to lead the world in the commercialisation of fusion technology and we’re investing over £700m in research programmes and facilities over the next three years.
“This is alongside the UK’s Fusion Strategy and regulatory framework, which apply to all technological approaches to fusion.”
