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Released November 28, 2024 | GALWAY, IRELAND
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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Japan is joining the race for commercial-scale nuclear fusion by launching the FAST (Fusion by Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) project.
The privately-led academia-industrial project is being led by Kyoto Fusioneering (Tokyo) and boasts a number of leading Japanese universities, firms and international partners from the U.K., U.S., and Canada. Designed to be smaller and more compact than many larger experimental projects underway, it is aiming to achieve fusion-based power generation by the end of the 2030s. Fusion aims to replicate reactions that power the sun to make cheap and emission-free power. It will use high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils and a low aspect ratio tokamak, to "lower costs and a shorter construction time", the group stated.
Sited in Japan, FAST will try to generate and sustain a plasma of deuterium-tritium (D-T) reactions, "demonstrating an integrated fusion energy system that combines energy conversion including electricity generation and fuel technologies". The project will employ a tokamak configuration, which the alliance noted has been in use since the 1950s and was chosen for its well-established data and scalability. The system will aim for a power generation of 50 to 100 megawatts (MW) and a discharge duration of 1,000 seconds of D-T fusion burn.
The partners are hoping to address the remaining technical challenges - or "gaps" - enroute to a commercial fusion power plant. It stated: "While previous or near-term planned fusion experiments have achieved, or will soon achieve, medium-pulse plasma discharges to de-risk the plasma confinement and control for a fusion pilot plant, critical obstacles remain in harnessing the energy transport for sustained external use, establishing the tritium fuel cycle, including tritium breeding, and integrating these advances into a configuration that represents a commercially viable fusion power plant. At present, no experimental device worldwide is capable of creating the necessary fusion environment - the fusion neutron flux and relevant thermal loads - to bridge the gap between the advanced plasma experiments of today and the desired end goal of practical energy extraction."
Industrial Info is tracking the world's largest and longest-running fusion experiment, the International Fusion Energy Project (ITER), fusion reactor located in Cadarache, southeastern France. It is a 35-nation project that has been running for decades and has suffered many technical hitches and manufacturing delays. Original costs of US$5 billion and a start-up date of 2020 have spiraled upwards to a budget of $27 billion and a startup time of 2039. In the U.K., Canada's General Fusion (Vancouver) spent a number of years working with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to build the country's first nuclear fusion plant at Culham. That project has been put on the backburner for now with General Fusion focusing on a smaller plant at its home base in Vancouver.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
The privately-led academia-industrial project is being led by Kyoto Fusioneering (Tokyo) and boasts a number of leading Japanese universities, firms and international partners from the U.K., U.S., and Canada. Designed to be smaller and more compact than many larger experimental projects underway, it is aiming to achieve fusion-based power generation by the end of the 2030s. Fusion aims to replicate reactions that power the sun to make cheap and emission-free power. It will use high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils and a low aspect ratio tokamak, to "lower costs and a shorter construction time", the group stated.
Sited in Japan, FAST will try to generate and sustain a plasma of deuterium-tritium (D-T) reactions, "demonstrating an integrated fusion energy system that combines energy conversion including electricity generation and fuel technologies". The project will employ a tokamak configuration, which the alliance noted has been in use since the 1950s and was chosen for its well-established data and scalability. The system will aim for a power generation of 50 to 100 megawatts (MW) and a discharge duration of 1,000 seconds of D-T fusion burn.
The partners are hoping to address the remaining technical challenges - or "gaps" - enroute to a commercial fusion power plant. It stated: "While previous or near-term planned fusion experiments have achieved, or will soon achieve, medium-pulse plasma discharges to de-risk the plasma confinement and control for a fusion pilot plant, critical obstacles remain in harnessing the energy transport for sustained external use, establishing the tritium fuel cycle, including tritium breeding, and integrating these advances into a configuration that represents a commercially viable fusion power plant. At present, no experimental device worldwide is capable of creating the necessary fusion environment - the fusion neutron flux and relevant thermal loads - to bridge the gap between the advanced plasma experiments of today and the desired end goal of practical energy extraction."
Industrial Info is tracking the world's largest and longest-running fusion experiment, the International Fusion Energy Project (ITER), fusion reactor located in Cadarache, southeastern France. It is a 35-nation project that has been running for decades and has suffered many technical hitches and manufacturing delays. Original costs of US$5 billion and a start-up date of 2020 have spiraled upwards to a budget of $27 billion and a startup time of 2039. In the U.K., Canada's General Fusion (Vancouver) spent a number of years working with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to build the country's first nuclear fusion plant at Culham. That project has been put on the backburner for now with General Fusion focusing on a smaller plant at its home base in Vancouver.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
