VIENNA (AP) – The Biden administration hopes to create a commercial nuclear fusion facility within 10 years as part of the nation’s transition to clean energy, United States (US) Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Monday.
Calling nuclear fusion a pioneering technology, Granholm said President Joe Biden wants to harness fusion as a carbon-free energy source that can power homes and businesses.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility” that the US could achieve Biden’s “decadal vision of commercial fusion,” Granholm said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press in Vienna.
Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn’t create radioactive waste.
Proponents of nuclear fusion hope it could one day displace fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. But producing carbon-free energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away.
A successful nuclear fusion was first achieved by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California last December in a major breakthrough after decades of work.
Granholm also praised the role of the Vienna-based United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog in verifying that states live up to their international commitments and do not use their nuclear programmes for illicit purposes, including to build nuclear weapons.
“The IAEA is instrumental in making sure that nuclear is harnessed for good and that it does not fall into the hands of bad actors,” she said.
The watchdog organisation has agreements with more than 170 states to inspect their nuclear programmes. The aim is to verify their nuclear activities and nuclear material and to confirm that it is used for peaceful purposes, including to generate energy.
Nuclear energy is an essential component of the Biden administration’s goal of achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by 2050.
Asked about the difficulty of finding storage sites for radioactive waste, Granholm said that the US has initiated a process to identify communities across the country who may be willing to host an interim storage location. Currently, most of the spent fuel is stored at nuclear reactors across the country.
“We have identified 12 organisations that are going to be in discussion with communities across the country about whether they are interested (in hosting an interim site),” she said. The US currently does not recycle spent nuclear fuel but other countries, including France, already have experience with it.
Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled in such a way that new fuel is created. But critics of the process say it is not cost-effective and could lead to the proliferation of atomic weapons.
There are two proliferation concerns associated with recycling, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association: The recycling process increases the risk that plutonium could be stolen by terrorists, and second, those countries with separated plutonium could produce nuclear weapons themselves.
“It has to be done very carefully with all these non-proliferation safeguards in place,” Granholm said.
Director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Dennis Whyte said the US has taken a smart approach on fusion by advancing research and designs by a range of companies working toward a pilot-scale demonstration within a decade.
“It doesn’t guarantee a particular company will get there, but we have multiple shots on goal,” he said, referring to the Energy Department’s milestone-based fusion development programme. “It’s the right way to do it, to support what we all want to see: commercial fusion to power our society” without greenhouse gas emissions.
