The Energy Department invests more in fusion energy

Tom Temin: And we should point out you are former National Nuclear Security Administration. You’ve been involved in the energy field. What is going on with this CRADA? I thought fusion was something that was a cute, big, but cute experiment, which resulted in a trillionth of a watt and that was the end of it, a couple of years ago.

Harris Walker: No, absolutely. I mean, I think until two years ago when Livermore really had that breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility, fusion was kind of seen as a science experiment. A lot of other methods for attaining fusion have been pursued over the years. And Inertial Fusion Energy is really the one that’s broken through and achieved net energy gain. So now I would say that where I once looked at it as a cool science experiment as well, we’ve moved more into an engineering phase where now, we’ve achieved net energy gain. NNSA certainly had different applications for what NIF was originally built for. But the applied energy application is its most relevant and promising one for the future of, really, the world. And so I think, yeah, it’s a great time to be in that space.

Tom Temin: So what will this CRADA do? What happens under it?

Harris Walker: Sure. So the CRADA is really going to focus on the target tree science for fusion. So fusion, particularly Inertial Fusion Energy, you’re directing a lot of lasers and therefore energy on a central point, which is a tiny little target. And that target really is where the energy then gets compressed on and then energy is created out from that reaction. So if we can perfect more target tree science, then you’re going to one, lower cost, two, get bigger repetition and hopefully a greater gain, which leads us on that commercialization pathway to make it more viable.

Tom Temin: And this tiny target, is it the size of the head of a pin or the size of a farmhouse or what are we talking here?

Harris Walker: Sure. I mean, I would say the target package itself is smaller. It’s about the size of a coin. Yeah. So we’re talking about something very small.

Tom Temin: And the next stage, say of engineering would do what? I mean, the next stage, not the final ultimate. But what do you want to do next relative to what happened a few years ago?

Harris Walker: Sure. So if you look at NIF, I’m not a scientist and I know you’re not either, but the targets are very expensive to manufacture. They are diamond coated. It’s a very expensive process. When you think about a commercialization pathway and the fact that you have to repeat that reaction many, many times per day, you need something that’s easier to create and can be replicable over a long period of time. These targets we need are going to happen very efficiently. And these wetted foams that we’ll be using in this experiment with Livermore over the next few years are a great tool to reduce that production time and cost.

Tom Temin: So the foam is the target?

Harris Walker: The foam is a method by which we will improve the target tree science is the theory that we’re going into Livermore to explore.

Tom Temin: Yeah. So foam wetted with liquid deuterium and tritium is part of all this, whatever that means?

Harris Walker: Tritium and deuterium are really just hydrogen offshoots. So I think that’s what makes fusion science so really viable for the future of energy. Nuclear fission, our traditional nuclear reactors, use highly radioactive materials. But with fusion, you don’t really have that meltdown risk because tritium and deuterium are hydrogen molecules.

Tom Temin: Right. So you’re trying to improve the target?

Harris Walker: Sure.

Tom Temin: In terms of its ability to throw out energy by correct modeling with this foam and these hydrogen compounds.

Harris Walker: Absolutely.

Tom Temin: All right. That makes sense. We’re speaking with Harris Walker. He’s head of government affairs at Focused Energy. And so is the goal here initially to create a fusion phenomenon that produces more energy than the first time around?

Harris Walker: Correct. And I mean, in 2021, NIF achieved ignition for the first time, but it was really a net neutral. And then in 2022, they achieved gain. And since then, NIF has had incremental gains ever since then. And so now we’re just working on commercializing everything that NIF has worked on and heading towards a fusion energy future.

Tom Temin: Because commercialization would have to be predicated on not just having it work, but having It work on some level of efficiency. That is to say, if you put a million watts into the fusion experiment and you got 1,000,001 watts out, yeah, you got more energy. But it’s not of use to anybody.

Harris Walker: Correct. And you want that repetition. You want the reaction to start and keep going. And so it’s efficiency in the process and it’s cost efficiency. So this is really commercially viable.

Tom Temin: Right, because the problem with so many things we have going now, windmill farms and big mirrors in the desert that shine on a tower, all of that, it produces very, very expensive electricity.

Harris Walker: And absolutely produces expensive electricity. And you have uptime and downtime. And with nuclear fusion, once that reaction starts and you’re able to figure out what the secret sauce is to getting that repetition and sufficient gain going, this is a reaction that keeps going.

Tom Temin: Is this something we’re likely to see in our lifetime or is this going to be like solar arrays in space? It’s great if you can afford 10,000 launches to get stuff up there and build it over 100 years.

Harris Walker: Right. No, absolutely. I mean, I think that folks that tell you that fusion is going to happen next year are giving you a quite a sales pitch, but fusion is going to happen in our lifetime. I think that our goal is to attain fusion and have a commercially viable power plant online around by 2040. And there’s nothing to say that itself won’t be ambitious, but it is doable compared to some of the, like I said, tomorrow, next year promises that you’re hearing from methods that really haven’t even achieved energy gain yet.

Tom Temin: And to get back to the CRADA. So this is under Lawrence Livermore. And how will this work operationally? What will your company do? What will Lawrence Livermore do and what will some other maybe industrial partners do in all of this?

Harris Walker: Sure. So I mean, CRADAs are a common tool by which the national labs can actually work with private partners. And so it’s an opportunity for us to actually work together, the government and the private sector. And so we will work to engage in these experiments alongside Livermore. They will bring their technical expertise and experience in targetry design and science from NIF to (here.) And we will bring a lot of our science expertise and engineers and physicists, many of whom actually worked at NIF and drove it towards ignition to come together and improve that science together in a way that makes it more commercially possible instead of just a lab possible.

Tom Temin: Right. And because originally, fusion came into the mind of people as an alternative to nuclear fission.

Harris Walker: Right.

Tom Temin: But fission has come a long way, and there’s a whole new generation of technologies that produce nuclear power in much smaller form factors with much greater safety than the big giant towers that took 25 years to build, that were used to from the 50s and 60s.

Harris Walker: Right. Yeah. So, I mean, small modular reactors are a technology that certainly the time that I spent at the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration were a big topic of conversation. And certainly, they offer promise and a smaller footprint and so, theoretically, a smaller meltdown risk. But it’s still, when you look at the pathway, the commercialization pathway for SMRs, the pathway that we’re shooting for with Inertial Fusion Energy. And SMRs, they really come online around the same time. And the scale of energy that could be produced by fusion versus an SMR is vastly different. And so if they’re going to come online at the same time, why would you not want to invest in something that’s going to achieve less radioactive environmental hazards and also achieve greater yield.

Tom Temin: Sure. And just a really pie in the sky question or pie on the ground question. Could fusion, in your opinion, potentially power vehicles in some way a locomotive maybe or airplanes?

Harris Walker: So I mean, your guess is as good as mine. I came from spending a couple of years in the lithium for EV battery space. I would love to think that maybe we eventually have a tritium-deuterium fuel cell, a fusion-powered car. But, I mean, we’re still working on figuring out how hydrogen cars work. So I think your lead time for that is going to be a lot longer. We figured out how to put nuclear reactors in submarines, though, so who’s to say we couldn’t do it in the car.