Nuclear fusion? It’s for thirty years, we usually say… for thirty years. Even today, nothing seems to contradict this assertion. The international Iter research project is accumulating difficulties. At the same time, some start-ups are displaying blissful optimism by betting on connecting a fusion machine to the electricity grid by 2030. However, a boost could well come from private players like Gauss Fusion, a company bringing together several European champions in very specialized fields. This company claims to be able to develop a first electricity reactor in around twenty years at a cost of around 20 billion euros, based on existing scientific results. Interview with its technical director Frédérick Bordry.
L’Express: The prospect of seeing nuclear fusion emerge still seems as distant. The emblematic Iter site, located in the south of France, is significantly behind schedule. According to you, you would be able to design a first electricity reactor on European soil around 2040. How can we believe it?
Frédérick Bordry: Iter remains a fantastic research program. However, its purpose is not to connect a reactor to the power grid but to create a fusion reaction and maintain it for a few hundred seconds. Secondly, the current European strategy consists of developing Demo, a demonstrator which will then pave the way for commercial exploitation. At the rate things are going and taking into account the delays already encountered on the Iter site, we will have to wait until 2100 to complete all these stages. It’s too slow. Industry and venture capital must therefore take over in order to accelerate the process.
So your company’s ambition is to move fusion from the research stage to that of application?
Absolutely. Gauss Fusion brings together several champions already recognized in the sector – Alcen (France), ASG (Italy), Bruker and Research Instruments (Germany), IDOM (Spain) – and cooperates with renowned European research institutes, such as Cern, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) or the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). All this expertise, and our status as a private actor, which makes us more agile and faster in the decision-making process, should allow us to build a reactor within a reasonable time frame, while avoiding the inertia specific to an international project. the scope of Iter.
Our roadmap is already well established. By the end of 2025, we will define the entire concept of our reactor by answering several central questions: what shape of chamber should we use? What technology should we choose to produce tritium which will be used as fuel? Once these choices have been made, we will take care of the engineering part – manufacturing a life-size superconducting coil, testing a tritium loop, etc. – before launching from 2035 into the construction of a fusion reactor of 1 gigawatt, or a power equivalent to that of a standard pressurized water reactor. Our goal is to be ready around 2040-2042. By the way, I don’t believe in all these start-ups who are predicting a merger on the electricity network from 2030. Their overly optimistic speeches are hurting the sector.
How much will it cost to build your reactor?
We will raise 50 million euros for the first phase – establishing the basic concepts. But for the second – engineering – and the third – the construction of the reactor – we will need respectively 1.5 to 1.8 billion euros, then 18 to 20 billion. To obtain these funds, the market will not be enough. We will also need public-private partnerships. Some will say that 20 billion is too expensive. But energy is a fundamental area for humanity and we are at a time of choices. Let’s not forget that in 2023, investments in the exploration, development and exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits will reach 500 billion dollars!
What are the major technical points on which you absolutely need to make progress?
To operate a fusion reactor, we will need tritium. However, it is not found naturally on Earth. So you have to make it. Currently, the global inventory of tritium stands at approximately 25 kilos. This is not enough since a single 1 gigawatt electric fusion reactor will consume 150 kilos of tritium per year. We will therefore have to seriously look into this problem. Especially since tritium loses its radioactivity in a little over 12 years. Fortunately, several technologies exist to create them. Like, for example, bombarding fast neutrons with lithium 6. We are currently evaluating the available options.
One of the characteristics of the Iter project is to use a “tokamak” to confine extremely hot plasma. You have opted for a different device. For what ?
Indeed, we chose a “stellarator” type model for our machine in order to get around a difficulty. You should know that Iter is a “pulsed” machine. It uses the magnetic field of a very large magnet to control extremely hot plasma. But this magnet must be recharged regularly. Calculations tell us that this operation will probably have to be carried out every two or three hours in the future, and that this recharge would last around twenty minutes. With a stellarator, we don’t have this kind of constraint. Thanks to experiments carried out in Germany, we know that with this type of machine, the plasma remains very stable. We can therefore have fewer interruptions. This is why we went down this path.
So Iter would be on the wrong track?
No. The experiments carried out on this site will greatly help us to develop our project. However, while the tokamak remains a good research machine, it is not a reactor model to follow to mass produce electricity for a country. Imagine building a machine with a large magnet that needs to be recharged every three hours for its entire lifespan. Some components would not resist it. Today, many specialists tell us that ultimately, fusion by magnetic confinement will be carried out by stellarators, even if their magnets are a little more complicated to build. Recently, MIT published an article explaining that the electricity output from a stellarator would be two to three times cheaper than that from a tokamak.
So there is still hope for fusion to emerge in Europe?
Yes. Magnets may have been difficult to build 30 years ago, but now, with new design tools, we know how. In reality, Europe has all the necessary skills not to leave the advantage of nuclear fusion to China or the United States. Of course, everything did not go as planned. With hindsight, I think we should have launched an Iter project per continent. If we had made this choice, the experimental machine would undoubtedly already be working on the European side. Now, it is time to pass the baton to industry for the construction of an operational reactor.
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