Fusion is almost here: This is no time for Congress to shortchange research funding

A new disruptive technology is emerging that could alter the global balance of power: fusion energy.

The response so far from Congress? “Meh!” And while the U.S. fiddles, our competitors around the world are tripping over each other to gain an advantage.

Fusion energy has experienced a dramatic leap forward in the last decade. Years ago, when I was in college, fusion seemed like a distant promise. The joke was that it was 30 years in the future and would always be 30 years in the future. But today, more than 30 years later, fusion energy is no longer 30 years away. It’s less than 20 years away, and that time frame keeps getting shorter.

Fusion is what powers the sun. It occurs when the nuclei of two small atoms (hydrogen, for example) merge or fuse, releasing enormous amounts of energy. Fusion differs markedly from fission, which we commonly call “nuclear.” That occurs when specific Actinide atoms, such as uranium and plutonium, break apart, releasing energy and smaller radioactive byproducts.

An uncontrolled fission reaction — a nuclear bomb — can be attained by compressing a sufficient mass and density of the appropriate Actinide atoms together. This was first accomplished in the U.S. during World War II, as related in the movie “Oppenheimer.”

Since that time, sustained fission reactions have been developed for power plants by many countries around the world.

I have always been a proponent of nuclear energy, even though I spent much of my private-sector career developing wind energy technology. Nuclear energy can meet much of the world’s demand, it’s reliable, and we need it to offset fossil fuels that emit climate-warming greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy has its good qualities, but it also has drawbacks, such as the risk of nuclear accidents, the cost and time to build nuclear power plants, and the unresolved political issue of what to do with nuclear waste.

But fusion, once tamed, will offer energy with virtually unlimited fuel, vastly reduced radioactive waste, and no threat of disastrous accidents. This is because, by its very nature, fusion requires extremely high temperatures and pressures to keep going. If these are interrupted, the reaction terminates on its own. (The sun maintains fusion because its enormous mass and gravity keep sufficiently high temperature and pressure at its center.)

The fuel most often used for fusion consists of two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. With the vast quantity of water on earth, there is plenty of deuterium to be had, and tritium can be produced.

Fusion has had recent dramatic leaps forward, including super strong magnets to hold the charged particles in confinement and an improved containment chamber design. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have already twice achieved ignition — that is, a higher level of energy output than what they had to put into the reaction chamber to get it started.

An important signal about the future of fusion is that private investors are now pouring billions of dollars into fusion startup companies.  But there are still big technical challenges that must be overcome to tame fusion, and this will require enhanced support for national laboratories and government-funded facilities to provide innovative solutions to these challenges, above and beyond the money going into startups. 

I have insight into this because, before I was elected to Congress, I earned a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and understand some of the complexities involved in reaching these solutions.

Unfortunately, the Congress is on its way to flatlining its spending on fusion research. Even though President Biden requested a large enough increase (32 percent) in fusion research to make critical progress, the Senate has proposed a skinny increase (4 percent over last year), and the House has proposed even less. To ensure that the U.S. leads and brings fusion into production more quickly, fusion research would need to receive even more than Biden requested. This investment would return massive benefits for the U.S. economy.  Imagine having clean, safe, zero-carbon, non-polluting energy, for tens of thousands of years.

Why would Congress turn its back on this clean, limitless, and affordable source of energy just when it is so desperately needed and seems just around the corner? I understand why Republicans in Congress feel the need to cut spending, especially when there’s a Democratic president, but I’ve seen this play before.

When I was involved in the development of wind energy technology, federal research dollars helped develop the technology that is providing so much clean energy today. The company I was with, U.S. Windpower/Kenetech, was a world leader. But as the technology matured, the federal government reduced support. We felt the loss personally at my company. Meanwhile, with public information available about the technology we developed, European countries, Chinese and others continued to plow forward improving their own technology with their own governments’ continued support. Today, only one of the ten largest wind turbine manufacturers is U.S.-based.

Let’s not let this history repeat itself. Congress should step up and invest in fusion. Don’t let this incredibly promising technology, with its potential economic and national security benefits, slip away to our competitors.

Jerry McNerney, a senior policy advisor for the Pillsbury Law firm, is a former eight-term congressman from California. A Ph.D. mathematician, he spent 25 years developing wind energy technology.