POWER May 2023 - 18

RESEARCH & DEVELOPEMENT
dustry, academia, and the U.S. national
labs, with the federal government providing
up to 50% cost-share to deliver a
conceptual design for an FPP that could
begin operation in the 2030s.
Applications for the program were due
in December 2022, and the DOE is expected
to make decisions on the winning
proposals in the spring of 2023. A survey
conducted by the FIA indicates that applications
were well in excess of current
appropriations, with as much as $150 million
requested from the $50 million opportunity.
Meanwhile, the 2024 White House
budget request, released in March, asks
for $130 million for the program.
Overseas, the UK is also moving bold4.
This September 2022 photo shows the Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) site in Massachusetts,
with the partially finished SPARC facility at lower left. Courtesy CFS
The FESAC plan was followed in early
2021 by another report-also requested
by the DOE-from the U.S. National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine (NASEM). That report
called for a similar effort that would deliver
an operating FPP in the 2035-2040
timeframe. It also recommended that
the DOE move forward in forming and
funding public-private partnerships to
develop conceptual and engineering
designs that could bring fusion to commercial
viability. The NASEM report was
notable in that it engaged the electric
utility industry and the Nuclear Energy
emissions by 2050.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm
said at the time, " We believe we
are making great progress, but it's going
to take time to get fusion commercialized.
It would be amazing if fusion were
a part of what I call the silver buckshot of
a clean energy future. "
Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.), chair
of the bipartisan Fusion Energy Caucus,
added, " We can successfully forge
a path to fusion energy. Fusion is the
holy grail of clean energy technologies,
and fusion has the potential to lift more
citizens of the world out of poverty than
" It would be amazing if fusion were a part
of what I call the silver buckshot of a clean
energy future. "
-Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Secretary of Energy
Institute, while also involving several
nuclear utilities in the report work.
Then, in March 2022, the Biden administration
held a White House summit
on fusion energy that was attended by a
wide range of representatives from the
public and private fusion communities.
At the summit, the administration announced
that it was developing " a bold
decadal vision to accelerate fusion " and
make it a key part of the path to net-zero
18
anything since the invention of fire. We
need a bicameral, bipartisan-in fact, I
would argue non-partisan-effort on fusion
energy. We can work together to
get this done. "
Working from these recommendations,
the DOE released a funding opportunity
in September 2022 for a
milestone-based
fusion
development
program. The milestone program envisioned
teams composed of private inwww.powermag.com
ly
forward with several similar initiatives.
The first, the Fusion Demonstration Plant
(FDP) announced in 2021, will house a
device built by Canadian private fusion
company General Fusion at the Culham
lab site. General Fusion and UKAEA
signed a cooperative agreement in 2022
to advance a range of fusion technologies
at Culham, and construction of the
FDP is expected to begin later in 2023.
A second, more ambitious program,
the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production
(STEP), is being led by UKAEA.
The program is intended to demonstrate
net electricity from fusion, develop operational
and maintenance data, and
demonstrate potential to breed tritium
for fuel. Unlike JET and ITER, which use
conventional tokamak plasmas, STEP
will be a spherical tokamak. This shape
is thought to potentially improve efficiency
of the magnetic field and reduce
plant cost. A site for STEP has been
selected in northeast England, and the
first phase of the program is underway
with the goal of producing a conceptual
design by 2024.
Meanwhile,
in
China,
design
and
engineering work on the Chinese Fusion
Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR)
has continued, with recent papers and
presentations suggesting that Chinese
researchers have made significant progress
toward construction and operation.
CFETR is the largest currently planned
fusion pilot plant, with a projected thermal
output of 2 GW (electric output will
likely be around 500 MW). Full operation
is planned for 2035.
Regulatory Challenges
Beyond the engineering and financial issues,
fusion will also need a regulatory
framework. Under the Atomic Energy
Act, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) has jurisdiction over fusion. HowPOWER
| May 2023
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POWER May 2023

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