Nuclear fusion-generated electricity: Is safer, more efficient energy on the horizon?

Fusion-fueled power generation has been the energy of the future for several decades.

"There's always been this sense that fusion is fifty years away," Saskia Mordijck says, but she adds that the horizon for safer and more efficient fusion-based electricity in our homes is really, truly getting closer.

Mordijck, a research assistant professor based in the Computer Science Department at William & Mary (with adjunct positions in physics and applied science), has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue her investigation of fusion energy.

She says most people are only vaguely aware of how fusion works and therefore have little idea of the advantages is offers over "traditional" nuclear power.

Fusion Energy
"Fusion energy is the exact opposite of what we have across the river in Surry where we have a nuclear power plant," she explained.

"In a nuclear power plant they actually bombard their material with small particles so it splits apart so there is energy released—that's fission."

To accomplish fusion, she says, you take two very small particles and heat them at high enough temperatures so that they fuse together.

"As a result of their fusing together they actually will release energy, as per Einstein's famous equation E=mc2.," Mordijck explained.

That's one most people recognize even if they have not had any physics."

Many advantages over fission 
When it comes to power generation, fusion has a number of advantages over fission and many of them relate to safety.

Mordijck says that the usual causes of anxiety over nuclear power generation just don't exist with fusion. Fukushima/Chernobyl-type incidents are not part of the equation.

"The nice thing about a fusion reaction is that if somehow it would go out of control, it would just stop itself automatically. If a fission reaction goes out of control, it can really go out of control," Mordijck explained.

"You can't stop it and it actually might go into a nuclear meltdown." The second set of fusion-over-fission benefits centers around radioactive waste.

Dealing with Nuclear waste
Mordijck acknowledges that certain amount of waste is inescapable, but a fusion power plant would generate only a fraction of the amount of nuclear waste that even the most efficient fission plants produce.

Not only is the amount smaller, but waste from a fusion plant also stays dangerous for much shorter periods of time.

"In a fission power plant we create a lot of radioactive waste which lasts for a very long time. It lasts longer than most things that we have here on Earth, and so we have to store it somewhere.

We cannot clean it any way or form," Mordijck explained. "Whereas in a fusion power plant, the lifetime of this waste is very short.

After 50 to 100 years, it will be completely gone and it will not be more radioactive than the surrounding environment and it won't be able to contaminate anything."

Funding cuts hinder progress
Fusion energy has been working in the sun, where the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium has been keeping us warm for years.

Despite all the potential advantages, fusion remains an experimental technology and an underfunded one at that, Mordijck says.

 "When people say that fusion always seems to be perpetually fifty years off, we fusion scientists point out that our funding has been cut every single year, so it's hard to make any progress," she noted.

Space Debris: French Corporation use UK design to 'harpoon' old satellites

UK engineers are developing a system to harpoon rogue or redundant satellites and pull them out of the sky.

It is a response to the ever growing problem of orbital junk - old pieces of hardware that continue to circle the Earth and which now pose a collision threat to operational spacecraft.

The harpoon would be fired at the hapless satellite from close range.

A propulsion pack tethered to the projectile would then pull the junk downwards, to burn up in the atmosphere.

"Space has become a critical part of our infrastructure - from weather forecasting and Earth observation, to GPS and telecommunications," said the harpoon's designer, Dr Jaime Reed, from French corporation EADS Astrium (UK).

"Space junk poses a real threat to these vital services if we do nothing about it, and so it's very important we develop capture technologies to remove some of this material. Studies have shown that taking out just a few large items each year can help us get on top of the problem."

Dr Reed's proposal is for a barbed spear about 30cm in length. It would be mounted on a "chaser satellite" that would edge to within 100m of a junk object.

Pictures sent to the ground would then be used to assess the target, before the chaser was moved to within perhaps 20m to take a shot.

Once the harpoon is hooked through the skin of the rogue satellite or rocket stage, the chaser could either pull on a trailing polymer cord itself or deploy a separate thruster unit to do the job of dragging the aimless drifter towards Earth.

Explosive concern
This is research in its very early stages. The BBC has filmed firing tests of a prototype harpoon at Astrium UK's Stevenage base.

EADS, the largest space manufacturer of aerospace and weapons in Europe, is also pursuing other ideas at its centres in France and Germany.

These concepts involve nets and robotic grappling devices. All systems have their pros and cons.

Harpoons could deal well with a satellite that is tumbling, for example, but the approach has its critics because of the fear it could actually add to our problems in space.

"Historically, one of the great sources of debris has been the explosion of fuel tanks in spent rocket stages," explained Dr Reed.

"We obviously don't want to be the cause of that, so our harpoon has a crushable cylinder. It's like a piston, and as soon as the harpoon hits the satellite wall, it rapidly decelerates, ensuring we don't travel right through the spacecraft, puncturing the tanks."

More than 50 years of space activity have left a huge quantity of redundant hardware in orbit.

This includes not just whole satellites and the upper-stages of the rockets used to put them there, but also debris from fuel tank explosions and nuclear powered devices.

National security expert warns of Asian space race

James Clay Moltz, an associate professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has published a commentary paper in the journal Nature where he warns of a possible space race involving many Asian nations, possibly leading to an arms race. 

 
Moltz writes that despite denials by the major Asian players, there exists the beginnings of a space race among the most technologically advanced countries in the area.

In the lead of course is China, which besides the United States and Russia, is the only country to have put a person in space on its own.


Other Asian countries actively involved in space technology include India, South Korea and Japan, though others such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan are working on building a presence as well.

Japan of course, has been actively involved with the International Space station, and India has been putting nerves on edge by mixing its space technology with military goals by building rockets capable of carrying a payload all the way to Beijing.

The country has also launched its own rockets into space to deliver satellites, though it’s not yet achieved the broad range of successes of the Chinese program.

The problem with an Asian space race, Moltz contends, is that it builds an arena of unhealthy competition bred out of historic geopolitical rivalries.

It also wastes resources, but that’s not something that should concern other countries. What should he writes, is the possibility of an Asian space race morphing into an Asian arms race, something that could impact virtually every nation on Earth.

The current situation, he explains, is a collection of Asian countries who are unwilling to work together to meet mutual goals such as can be seen with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Instead, individual countries work independently, quite often duplicating work done by other countries both in Asia and in the west, resulting in secretive programs that have as a goal beating one another to the next level, rather than building programs that serve the national, or international good.

What is perhaps most chilling about an Asian space race is the way China, which is the clear leader, has gone about its space program, highlighted not by its triumphs in manned exploration, but in it’s destruction of one of its dead weather satellites by an anti-satellite weapon back in 2007.


Not only did that action contribute to the vast collection of space junk, but it sent shock waves through the entire international community as it demonstrated very clearly the types of technology China has been secretly working on. And because of its leadership role in the Asian community, the action has likely set other countries to develop their own such weapons.

One other worrisome offshoot of the space race is the impact it might have on those Asian countries unable to join in.

Pakistan, for example, a country with nuclear weapons, has voiced concerns over the missile technology that India has developed and has repeatedly made it clear that any actions by India it deems a threat to its own survival would be met with all out war, including the use of nuclear bombs.

More information: Technology: Asia's space race, Nature 480, 171–173 (08 December 2011) doi:10.1038/480171a

Nuclear-Waste Train Glows Red Hot in Infrared

Railroad cars carrying some 123 tons of nuclear waste glow red-hot in an infrared picture taken in Valognes (map), France, in November and released by Greenpeace International as part of an antinuclear-power campaign that included arranging protests that delayed the train's progress.

The train is hauling a so-called CASTOR convoy, named after the type of container carried: Cask for Storage and Transport Of Radioactive material. These trademarked casks have been used since 1995 to transport nuclear waste from German power plants to France for reprocessing, then back to Germany for storage.

"High-level waste is in fact hot," said nuclear energy and proliferation expert Matthew Bunn. "It doesn’t mean anything in particular in terms of how dangerous it is."

(Related pictures: "Leaking Nuclear Waste Fills Former Salt Mine.")

Russian Ex-navy chief denies dumping nuclear waste in Baltic Sea

Ex-navy chief denies Russia dumped nuclear waste in Baltic Sea

Picture shows the Russian Navy's carrier Admiral Kuznetsov

The former commander of the Russian navy's Baltic fleet on Friday denied Swedish media reports that Russia dumped radioactive and chemical waste into Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s.

"This is complete nonsense and a clear provocation, propagated at an international level," Admiral Vladimir Yegorov, who commanded the Baltic fleet from 1991 to 2000, told the Interfax news agency.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Thursday called for the previous governments to explain a television report that Russia dumped chemical weapons and radioactive waste off the shores of a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea.

According to the television report on the SVT network on Wednesday, the waste dumped in Swedish waters between 1991 and 1994 came from the giant Karosta naval base in the Latvian port city of Liepaja.

"The naval forces that were pulling out of the Liepaja naval base in Latvia in the early 1990s did not have chemical weapons, radioactive materials and waste," Yegorov insisted.

He added that the Russian naval forces were monitored by Latvia as they pulled out of the port and that the naval command acted "strictly within the framework of Russian and Latvian agreements."

A summit of heads of state of countries bordering the Baltic Sea was to take place in Helsinki Wednesday to try to solve the problems of one of the world's most polluted seas.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was due to attend.