A trip to ‘Fusion Island’

Energy is regularly creating headline news, and much of it makes grim reading. Rising petrol prices and an increasingly unstable geo-political situation in the planet’s oil-producing regions are hardly reassuring.

Anxiety over CO2 emissions and a growing, though by no means universal consensus that ‘something must be done’ poses more questions than answers. On a more positive note we are witnessing the first, tentative steps towards a clean, sustainable ‘hydrogen economy’ and real progress towards fusion energy as a viable technology.

As three specialists in energy technology, science and policy, we have a ‘big idea’ that links all the above, and which we hope will prompt comment and suggestions.

As well as departing from the conventional wisdom that fusion energy’s role will be as a generator of electricity, we believe we have identified a neat solution to one of the major technical issues facing the nascent fusion industry.

Our proposal is to plan for nuclear fusion energy not for electricity generation, but as a hydrogen production technology. We are not the only ones to take this position — General Atomics, the US nuclear technology group, has highlighted nuclear fusion as a production source for a hydrogen economy.