ATOMS TOGETHER, AT LAST: RECENT FUSION ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH

 Nuclear fusion vs fission

 Breakthrough fusion technology

 Fusion deployment timeframe

NUCLEAR FUSION BREAKTHROUGH

Nuclear Energy and Oil and Gas

Nuclear energy has entered the Canadian oil and gas conversation, as producers look for ways to follow through on their ambitious climate goals.Mostof this conversation centers on theSmall Modular Reactor (SMR), adesign concept that couldbe used to produce zero-carbon heat and power for oil sands use.

"Absolutely, weare looking at SMRs as a low or no-emission source of the high temperature heat we need," said Martha Hall Findlay, chief climate officer for Suncor Energy Inc.”

Many people have heard of nuclear power but are unsure of how the energy is created. There are twomain ways to create nuclear energy,both of which use the binding powerof protons and neutrons to release a large amount of energy.

Nuclear Fission

The firstprocess, fission, occurswhen high speed neutrons collide with a heavy atom, inmost cases uranium-235. Thiscauses the heavy atom tosplitinto lighter elements, releasing extra neutrons and a large amount of energy. This energyis then typically used to heat water,creating steam which is used to drive a turbine and produceelectricity. The heat could also be used directly in an industrial process,like creating steam for SAGD.Elements like uranium are used for fission because atoms arelarge and splitapart relatively easily.Fission is responsible for all commercial nuclear powergeneration today.

Nuclear Fusion

Conversely, fusion occurswhen two lighter atoms combine to form a larger atom. Fusion is also accompanied by a large release inenergy.Most fusion experiments and technology use hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium)which arecombined under extreme heat and pressure to produce the heavier element helium, a single neutron, and energy. This is the same reaction that occurs in the sun.

Fusion has some important advantages over fission:it releases several times the energy generated by fission and does not create radioactive by-products. However,the process is extremely complex and is only at a laboratory-stage of readiness. Experimentstoday require large amounts of energy to initiate the fusion reaction, and it’s difficultto control or recreate.

Recent Fusion Breakthrough: a Net Energy Gain

Fusion developmentmarked a major milestone onDecember 5, 2022, when researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) inCalifornia createda nuclear fusion reaction that producedmore energy than itconsumed, a “net energy gain.” Achieving this was a long-awaited step towards using fusion to produce power.

NIF used a form of nuclear fusion called inertial confinement fusion. A cylindercontaining a pellet/capsule of hydrogenisotopes is shot with 192 high-energy lasers and heated to 3 million degrees Celsius.This heats the outer layer of the pellet, which explodes outwards generating an inward-moving compression front, or implosion, that compresses and heats the inner layers of the pellet.

Theoretically,this energycan then create a chain reaction with neighboring pellets.NIF did this experimentwith a single pellet.

Implications for the Canadian Oil and Gas Industry?

This is a huge accomplishment, but what does thismean for the Canadian oiland gasindustry, and isnuclear fusion now ready to power our facilities? Not quite. The “net energy gain” only reflects the amount of energy that entered and left the capsule. The actual amount ofenergy required to power the lasers was almost100 times greater than the amount of energy that left the capsule. Further,the current facility only fires onceper day. It is estimated that to make this a feasible power source,thereaction will need to occur 10 times per second. The first step was achieving theignition, andnow itneeds to becomemore efficient and repeatable. “Thiswas one capsule, one time.”

Overall, this is regarded as a great scientific achievement, but there is still no known date ofwhen fusionwill be utilized as a reliable power source. The goal of the NIF is to understand how fusion worksand behaves but not to make it economicallyviable.

The Fusion Timeline: a Few Decades?

When the director of the NIF was questioned on how long itwill be until Inertial Confinement Fusionwill be a feasible power solution, her response was “Probably decades — not six decades, not five decades, which iswhat weused to say.I think it’smoving into the foreground and probably, with the concerted effort of investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to builda power plant.”