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Why?
• Climate change + energy for everyone
• Renewables and storage aren’t enough
• Something needs to power the CCS equipment
• Fusion is underinvested
How do we get to fusion?
• Select an approach
• Science: breakeven, reactor-relevant gain
• Engineering: working reactor
• Market: competitiveness
Approach: Portfolio, TRLs
• NASA uses a portfolio of approaches for high risk projects
• Fusion needs a portfolio too
• Strong Atomics does this
Science
• Breakeven and reactor-relevant gain must be possible
• Must also be small, fast and cheap
• Pick conservatively or fail fast/cheaply
Science: Shared softwareHard:
• Proliferation of codes
• Classified codes
• Licensing
• Revenue model
• Shortage of software expertise
Helps with:
• Selecting approaches
• Peer review
• Interpreting experimental results
• Credibility with investors
• Portfolio management
Science: Shared diagnosticsHard:
• Challenging to share equipment
Helps with:
• Expense
• Interpreting experimental results
• Credibility
Science: Shared pulsed powerHard:
• Everyone wants something slightly different
• Hard to share
• Where do you put it?
Helps with:
• Cost (30-50% for some projects)
Science: RollupHard:
• Lack of competition
• Not everyone wants to join
• Lots to argue about
• Need to move people
• Disruption when setting up
Helps with
• Everyone in one place
• Shared teams for power, software, diagnostics, etc
• Shared management, fund-raising, etc
Science: Holding companyBut:
• Enough companies to share software?
• Enough similarities so share hardware?
Helps with
• Centralize software
• Maybe centralize other aspects
• Can invest in anything
• Competition between approaches
Engineering
• Lots of challenges: tritium, neutrons, high current, etc
• Impossible to fail fast here
• Pick carefully or pray
Market
• Metrics: LCOE (c/kWh), Total OCC ($)
• Targets: 5 c/kWh, $500M?
• What are you selling (not just base-load electricity)?
• Load following? Sell heat? Heat storage?
Strong AtomicsRequests:
• Standardize and share more
• Double-check pricing assumptions
• Find more promising approaches
Postion:
• Fusion is possible and promising
• Portfolio (can’t pick a winner yet)
• Science board (pick potential winners)
• Open to facilitating sharing
Malcolm Handley, [email protected]