GeekOut, episode 2!

Out of all of the technologies that we are trying to perfect today, I think fusion power holds one of the largest potentials to really transform our world. Clean, cheap, and abundant energy wouldn’t just lower our electricity bills, it would fundamentally change how we think about electrical power and how we use it. Like most new technologies, this could lead to both good and bad uses, but I believe the potential upsides for outweigh the negatives.

First, though, let’s make sure we are on the same page: what even IS fusion power? How does it work?

Today, we already have nuclear fission power plants. These split atoms apart, which produces a ton of energy and heat. We use that heat to turn water into steam, and the steam turns a turbine. These fission plants often use uranium fuel rods. Just 1 kilogram, or about 2.5 lbs, of uranium can produce the equivalent energy of 1,500 tons of coal! This would be enough electricity to power the average house for over 100 years.

Nuclear fusion, then, does the opposite of fission. Instead of splitting atoms, we put two atoms together to form a new atom. This is the same process that every star in the universe uses to produce its light and heat. This process produces much more energy; a kilogram of deuterium used to fuel a theoretical fusion plant would have the equivalent energy output of 29 MILLION tons of coal! This is because deuterium is a much lighter substance than uranium. So while a fusion reaction only makes about four times the energy of a fission reaction, you get orders of magnitude MORE reactions with a kilogram of deuterium. All without radioactive waste to worry about!

Most fusion power plant designs still rely on the age-old steam turbine for the final production of electricity. This may sound oddly old fashioned, but we have gotten incredibly good at building steam turbines! There are some theoretical designs, however, that use fusion to produce electricity directly, eliminating the steam turbine step all-together. This process gets complex quickly, but basically there is a magnetic pulse that occurs within the plasma of a fusion reaction that could be harvested for electricity. Prototype designs for these reactors are being built today.

So if fusion is so great, why don’t we have it everywhere? The biggest hurdle is getting the fusion reaction to a net positive energy production state, meaning it puts out more power than it takes to sustain the reaction. The reactor design itself is also extremely challenging; many rely in carefully placed magnets to contain the insanely hot plasma needed to spark a fusion reaction, which can reach temperatures of 150 million degrees celsius! Researchers around the world are striving to reach that net positive energy milestone, and the first ones that figure it out will have made history.

Making fusion power a reality would not only enable cheap and clean power production. It would also unlock potential solutions to all sorts of other problems that were always too energy intensive to attempt before. From scrubbing CO2 from out atmosphere and desalinating ocean water, to vertical farming at scale and metal recycling - all of these things are being done today, but are hugely limited by the cost of energy required to enable them.

The stupendous power potential for fusion power plants are exactly why they are featured in so many sci-fi settings, including my book, ‘Of Oracles and Sirens’. The generational starship, Requiem de la Lune, uses two fusion plants to power its warp drive and all the systems onboard the ship. My novel leans into the possibilities of a fusion plant that produces electricity directly, without a steam turbine involved. The benefits of such a reactor design for spacecraft are fairly obvious: much less moving parts, which means less complexity and less maintenance, in addition to weight savings. The ship also carries all the components needed to build a fusion plant for the new settlement that they will establish once they reach their destination in the Trappist-I system.