US envoy Kerry launches international nuclear fusion plan at COP28
U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry on Tuesday launched an international engagement plan to boost nuclear fusion, saying the emissions-free technology could become a vital tool in the fight against climate change. Kerry said the plan involved 35 nations and would focus on research and development, supply chain issues, and regulation, and safety. “There is potential in fusion to revolutionize our world,” Kerry told the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. Fusion, which powers the sun and other stars to generate electricity, can be replicated on Earth with heat and pressure using lasers or magnets to smash two light atoms into a denser one, releasing large amounts of energy. The nascent technology could have an important advantage over today’s nuclear fission plants by producing huge amounts of unlimited power without long-lasting radioactive waste. But there are big hurdles to fusion’s producing commercial electricity. For one, scientists have so far only achieved scattered instances where fusion experiments produce more energy than is required to make them happen. U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry participates in an event on women’s role in building a climate-resilient world, at COP28 World Climate Summit, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, December 4, 2023. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights There are also regulatory, construction and siting hurdles in creating new fleets of power plants to replace parts of existing energy systems. Britain and the United States on Nov. 8 signed a cooperation agreement on fusion. Other countries pursuing fusion include Australia, China, Germany and Japan. In August, scientists using laser beams at a U.S. national lab in California repeated a fusion breakthrough called ignition where for an instant the amount of energy coming from the fusion reaction surpassed that concentrated on the target. Scientists estimated, however, that the net energy output of that experiment was only about 0.5% of the energy that went into firing up the lasers. Of the two main types of fusion, one uses lasers to concentrate energy on a gold pellet containing hydrogen. The other uses powerful magnets to trap plasma, or gaseous hydrogen heated to about 100 million degrees Fahrenheit (55 million degrees Celsius). Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by William James, Alexander Smith and Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate diplomacy: COP 28
The 28th Conference of the Parties on climate change is planned for Nov. 30 through Dec. 12, 2023, in Dubai.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: nuclear
Nuclear energy provides almost 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply. Advocates have called for an expanded role for nuclear as an emissions-free fuel source. But the economics of building new reactors are daunting. In addition, lingering safety concerns are an institutionalized part of the calculation of nuclear regulation, and highly radioactive nuclear waste remains a can that public officials have been inclined to kick down the road. The Energy Information Administration projects a sharp decline in nuclear power generation over the next decade, as new nuclear plants — two are planned — are more than offset by anticipated retirements of several operating reactors.