Technicians work on the bioshield inside the Tokamak Building of the International Thermonuclear ... [+]
As most people know by now, on August 16, President Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act. Although reducing inflation is an unlikely outcome of the legislation, the new law does do a variety of things including boosting funding to the IRS, setting a minimum corporate tax rate for the largest corporations, allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices for programs Medicare, and authorizing billions in spending and tax credits for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Additionally, the law gives a boost to development of nuclear fusion technology.
Of all the new clean energy technologies, including wind, solar and hydro, nuclear fusion—safer than and sometimes confused by the public with nuclear fission—has by far the most potential to be a revolutionary new energy source. It is also the most unproven—but that’s beginning to change.
While skeptics have been pointing out for years that fusion always seems 30 years away from viability, researchers have hit several key milestones in the last year and now, finally, the industry is getting to the point where pilot projects can be built. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, for example, is building a pilot plant in Massachusetts and, if all goes well, it could be a model for a commercial plant to come online sometime in the 2030s.
The new law includes $280 million for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science “to carry out activities for fusion energy science construction and major items of equipment projects,” and it also provides billions of additional funding to the DOE’s loan program office, some of which could go to fusion projects that have trouble securing funding from private sources. A recent article in the Washington Post noted that these funds are likely to be used by firms as they seek assistance from the government through cost-sharing programs and loan guarantees.
Still, don’t expect the technology of the future to arrive at our doorstep just yet. In Europe, an experimental fusion reactor has run into significant cost overruns and regulatory delays, and this may just be the beginning of a longer, more drawn out saga. As George Mason University Professor Robin Hanson recently noted on Twitter, “scary vibes” are often enough to dissuade the public from supporting new technologies. While fusion doesn’t carry the risk of meltdown that fission reactors do, there’s nevertheless a perception about nuclear power in general, including an association with nuclear weapons, that leads some to be wary. The perception, as Hanson notes, could result in fusion being “destroyed by over-regulation.”
Fusion has the potential to unleash truly cheap, abundant and clean energy that could fundamentally change the way modern societies operate. Whether our current regulatory paradigm—which requires handholding from the government at nearly every stage as well as buy-in from a skeptical public often prone to “NIMBYism”—is up to the task remains an open question. However, this is one technology that may be coming regardless of whether the public is ready for it or not. Just don’t expect the rollout to go exactly as planned.
