ICC recap and Bill Gates TED talk review

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Confidentiality

Most physicists are quoted anonymously, per request.  If you read this and recognize yourself and don’t mind being identified, let me know. 

The ICC Workshop

Eric Lerner was invited to present FF1 at the poster session on Tuesday.  I was also privileged to attend and got to meet many of the physicists working on innovative confinement concepts. 

What are “Innovative Confinement Concepts?”  Per one speaker, this isn’t about new ways to incarcerate criminals.  It’s about confinement of plasma. 

The program consisted of 39 oral presentations and several poster sessions.  [Per the program book, the total number of oral and poster presentations is 103.  Some did both.  Are they double counted?] 

As you can see from the program,  the experiments were grouped into sessions as follows:

• Mirrors:  Gas Dynamic traps and Rotating; Dipole
• Magnetized Target Fusion,
• Field Reversed Configuration,
• Extended MHD Modeling, Spheromak Formations and other
• Spheromak and RFP
• Stellarator and Helical System
• Spherical Torus and Moving Wall

[Note:  Educational Goal:  The various concepts, along with abstracts, explanation and comparisons for a lay audience need to be written up in detail for our “contenders” section of the website.  For an excellent overview, see Simon Woodruff’s An Overview of Tokamak Alternatives in the US Fusion Program with the Aim of Fostering Concept Innovation (pdf document).

Impressions

There was a lot of information at the ICC.  Here are a few impressions at random. 

Advances in computation revives some ideas

Many of these fusion concepts are not new.  They have been around for decades, but were shelved in favor of the tokamak once they became too complex to work with.  They are experiencing a revival, however, due to new theoretical insights, increased computational power and the ability to deploy better computer modeling. 

Capacitor and switch problems

As you know if you’ve followed the LPP experiment, the switches are a big problem with these types of experiments.  This seems to be universal. 

One presenter had a slide of their machine and there had to be 30-50 capacitors in their bank.  I told him about LPP’s switch woes.  He said he used to use the same type of switches as LPP did, but gave up on them, with much frustration.  He now uses a different type of switch. 

He was then told that he only speaks poorly of our type of switch because he has experience of it.  Soon, he will be speaking poorly of all switches. 

He went on to lament the need to “baby” capacitors.  “You have to pet them.  And when you have 50, and you have to pat them each time…”  It’s a pain.  Indeed.

From this I gather that the field of fusion could be advanced by dramatic improvements in switches and capacitors – since many of the experiments used them.  Most of the researchers spend a lot of time machining and retooling their switches, just like our LPP gang.  Maybe we need an Xprize for nano-second split timing coordinated switches before anything else.

It’s a “for want of a nail…” kind of problem.

The preceding is an example of an engineering problem that affects fusion research, and the benefits that could come from collaboration with other fields (interdisciplinary research) that might result from a more widespread awareness of the issues involved in fusion research. 

Connecting With Natural Phenomenon

Earth is a relatively cold place, and the chemistry and physics at work here are atypical of the bulk of the structure of the universe - which is plasma. 

At one time, the study of electricity seemed like a waste of time, a trifling amusement.  Eventually, it turned out to be the basis of our civilization.  Likewise, plasma physics may seem exotic and irrelevant now (if funding is any indicator), but it’s a key part of how the universe works.  The pursuit of this research, even on a theoretical basis, thus seems intrinsically valuable. 

The levitating dipole experiment is inspired by the observation that solar wind, upon striking the magnetosphere, sends the plasma into a peak profile.  This is like taking a bunch of sand on a table, hitting the table, and watching the sand spring up into a sand castle [or perhaps a sand dune?].  The question is why does this happen, and can it be leveraged into a fusion generation device?  Another question from the observation that the surface temperature of the sun plunges down to a balmy 5000 degrees, and then a short distance away, rises up again.  Why is that?  How can we use this information? 

There is a lot to explore in the realm of plasma.  Fusion researchers are on the forefront of that exploration.  Many contributions to science remain to be done.

Funding Fusion Reactors

The unmistakable impression I got from this workshop was that many of the researchers would like to explore promising areas of fusion with the aim of producing a reactor, but they are constrained in this endeavor. 

I was reassured that LPP is not deficient for not landing an ARPA-E grant.  As one physicist said – “I, and everyone in this room, got very excited when the ARPA-E grants were announced.  We figured this was designed for our line of inquiry.  We applied for it – as, I am sure, did every other group here.  We didn’t get funded, and I bet you – nobody else here did.  If you look at the funding – it all went to things that are 5 years away – better light bulbs and other things.” Here is a link to a list of funded ARPA-E projects - you can see what ended up being funded.

On Wednesday night, there was a DOE presentation regarding funding for the next fiscal year.  A paltry 16.7 million is earmarked for ICC projects, which have to recompete for the funds.  Preference is to be given to those who are not pursuing their own approach to fusion, but supporting tokamak research.  Per one of the ICC attendees:

A goodly amount of the 16.7 m$ will go to tokamaks —OK they are spherical tokamaks but still tokamaks, and to stellarators –- hasn’t DOE learned their lesson after spending 100M$ building poor stellarator coils and then canceling the project?  [with regard to preference to projects that support tokamak research]..., specifically ITER. How does that qualify as innovative? Do they think that 10M$ more spent on ITER research will make the difference for a world-wide project already spending 1 B$ per year?

 

Below are the relevant quotes.  Here is the entire document.

DOE:  Focus of solicitation 1
“As the world program enters the burning plasma era, ICC research should migrate toward investigations of the physical framework that will govern the dynamics and control of the self-organized burning plasma state in future toroidally-confined plasmas.

Research that can help increase the scientific understanding of magnetic confinement and has the potential to improve the tokamak concept is an important focus area. Examples include research that can address critical problems that hinder the tokamak concept, such as plasma disruption, heat load on components, and operational and maintenance complexity.

Key program issues include:
• Initiation and increase of plasma current
• Dissipation of plasma exhaust power
• Symmetric-torus confinement prediction
• Stability, continuity, and profile control of low-aspect-ratio symmetric tori
• Quasi-symmetric and 3D shaping benefits to toroidal confinement performance
• Divertor design for 3D magnetic confinement configurations
• The plasma-materials interface

Compared to previous ICC solicitations, increased emphasis will be placed on those proposals that have the most promise of making such linkages and addressing the key issues.

Another priority is carry out experiments in regimes relevant to the mainline magnetic confinement and materials science efforts in order to help validate theoretical models and simulation codes, thus supporting the FES goal to develop an experimentally-validated predictive capability for magnetically confined fusion plasmas.

You have to admire the focused pursuit of an idea.  The people in charge here have a goal – to get that tokamak working – and they are using every means at their disposal to make that happen. 

Unfortunately, this is coming at the expense of other ideas which are not being nurtured – instead, they are being sacrificed - Ideas that might get a working fusion reactor much faster.  It’s possible that there is a zero-sum fear behind this – the fear that the budget is set, and this is it – so the only thing we CAN do is put all the resources into the 2 biggest projects.  It’s not clear where this drive is coming from.  Is it new DOE administration? 

[Action Step:  We need to set up a panel to discuss this – and make sure the decision makers who are behind the current narrow funding focus are invited.  We need to get more facts about the reasons for these budgetary decisions, get some ideas about how to diversify funding.

On the one hand, it could be seen as solid leadership, making the tough choices between programs.  On the other hand, it’s a lack of visionary leadership – of not standing up for more funding for the diverse options present in your group.  There are some fascinating concepts here – none of which can really be evaluated without more study and testing.  Some of which may usher in a golden age of fusion. 

The current approach to funding does not rise to the challenge of fusion.  As one physicist put it,

The fusion leadership does not measure favorably against that which developed the A-bomb. They quickly tried method after method to get practical solutions. Tokamaks are still fighting the problems they knew existed 40 years ago.

This is an outrage, especially in light of the Bill Gates TED talk, which I discuss below.

Fusion diffusion

A lot of interesting science has come out of the pursuit of fusion via tokamaks.  However, the sense that there is a zero sum game going on here at the expense of alternatives is hard to shake.  By focusing all efforts on a few approaches, the fusion effort is defused.

The emphasis on the big, complex tokamak and sense of a lack of alternatives may also be the reason why many possible funders, have turned their backs on fusion.  Take Google.

Google Flees Fusion Funding

In this interview, Google explains their policy to not fund fusion:

But if it clearly violates the laws of physics, then we’re not interested. If it is something that looks like it has the potential to be really earthshaking, then we could be interested. But unfortunately we can’t fully evaluate all possible technologies, so we aren’t able to make that judgment call on every type of alternative energy. Fusion and cold fusion, for example, are both areas where we felt that we could not develop enough expertise. Furthermore, the amount of money that would be required to make real progress was prohibitive: if we put $10 million into something, well in a couple years they’d need another $50 million, and a couple years after that they’d need another $200 million and so on.

That’s right.  Google can’t evaluate all possible technologies.  So they send out proposals to other people in the fusion community to evaluate.  As they did with the LPP proposal.  LPP was asking for 2-5 million.  If phase one didn’t work – you wouldn’t have to go any further.  Not much to lose.  Insights to gain.  The reviewer they picked took a conservative approach to the work.  Since he couldn’t evaluate if it would work without other experiments being done first - he passed on it.

This in itself is proper (scientists’ confidence is bolstered by multiply referenced publications), but inefficient.  The cost in time and money to do the recommended supportive experiments would be more than the cost to do this series of experiments. 

There were many credible physicists at the ICC workshop who find the LPP experiment compelling and worthy of pursuit, if only for the knowledge it will add to the field of fusion.  No one can guarantee Google that it will work.  If a guarantee of the device working is what is required to underwrite fusion funding, we won’t get anywhere. 

No guarantees are possible, yet scientists are interested to see what the results will be.  The pure pursuit of knowledge is compelling, but when you have to put a price tag on it, or compete for the funds, things get conservative and lock down quickly. 

It is possible that the lack of enthusiasm by that reviewer for advancing exploration in the field hurt the entire field.  Because of conservative reviews like this, Google threw up its hands and seems to have a “no fusion” policy in general. 

[For more thoughts on Google’s fusion policy and that article join this post]

More Votes of “No Confidence”

Another vote of “no confidence” in the fusion field comes from Charles Seife in his book “Sun in a Bottle.” 

Yet another dismissal comes from Scientific American in their Feb. 2010 article “Fusion’s False Dawn”. 

Both of those reviews of the fusion field see only the tokamak and NIF.  In other words, the field of fusion is being dismissed on the merits of it’s two biggest approaches – while a lot of interesting, promising, lesser approaches are not considered.  Most people aren’t aware of them. 

The dynamic seems to be:  From outside the field, people ask those at the top what is going on.  They say there are only two shows in town – neither of which appeals to the outsiders because of their complexity and expense.  It’s expensive energy for the rich.  But outsiders aren’t given much else to consider. 

But the most telling vote of “no confidence” comes from Bill Gates, and it should make the fusion community reflect on how we’ve sold ourselves out.

Bill Gates TED Talk and Fusion

Bill Gates, in his TED talk soberly considers the plight of humanity, its need for clean energy, and the solutions out there.  And then he goes on to enthusiastically support fission. 

Fission.

House of Fusion - wake up call! 

It’s not all bad.  Gates, by his example, provides some excellent perspective on fusion.  His TED talk has some very encouraging thoughts, and a brilliant strategy.  If we simply apply the same strategy to Fusion, I think we can beat those fission guys. 

Gates defines the energy+CO2 challenge as reducing the price of electricity, making more electricity available, and taking CO2 to zero. 

He tops this off with a note of urgency:  “We have to drive at full speed to get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline.”

Gates then opened a jar of fireflies and said,

There’s all sorts of gimmicky solutions like that one.  but they don’t really add up to much. We need solutions, either one or several that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability.  And although there’s many directions that people are seeking, I’ve left out tide, geothermal, fusion, biofuels.  Those may make some contributions and if they can do better than I expect, so much the better.

There you have it.  Fusion is gimmicky, too large scale, and unreliable.  (I believe he was referring to renewables as unreliable).  The choice of fireflies seemed to be a direct dis of fusion.  A “Firefly” is the name given to a type of fictional fusion-powered ship, “Serenity”, created by Joss Whedon.  Gates seems to be suggesting that the fusion crowd is forever trapped in a jar of fiction.

Gates then went over what he thought of as the real contenders.  Fossil fuels (if you can clean and sequester the carbon), Nuclear fission, and renewables (except renewables require batteries, and “All the batteries on Earth can store only 10 minutes of the worlds electricity needs.”)

Of these, Gates found the greatest promise in nuclear fission.  Now listen to his strategy.

How do we go forward on this?  What’s the approach?  Is it a manhattan project?  What’s going to get us there?

We need lots of companies working on this.  Hundreds.  In each of these 5 paths we need at least 100 people.  A lot of them you’ll look at and say “they’re crazy’, and that’s good.

OK, STOP RIGHT THERE.  Let’s use those same words and apply them to fusion.

“We need lots of fusion companies working on this.  HUNDREDS.  At least.  A lot of them you’ll look at and say “they’re crazy”, and that’s good.”

Wow!  Permission to explore and err in the pursuit of science!  What a concept.  Why doesn’t this apply to fusion?

I feel that the fusion community is perhaps a bit embarrassed by past public shaming.  People keep bringing up the cold fusion and sonofusion debacles.  But the fact of the matter is these false starts were quickly exposed for what they were, so the scientific method worked.  And actually there were some interesting phenomenon, especially with the bubbles.  Not useful for fusion, as it turns out.  But perhaps for something, some day down the line. 

It’s true that a lot of crackpots do tend to congregate around fusion concepts.  But why is trying 100 different approaches and looking crazy acceptable for fission, but not fusion? 

Is there a double standard here?  There is.  And it’s having a crippling affect on fusion, while not really affecting FISSION, or other less deserving energy ideas.

People, fusion is the holy grail of energy and yet it seems to get such short shrift in the media.  Perhaps this is because it doesn’t have vocal champions.

Gates then went on to list some recent innovations in fission.  The Terrapower he describes is great.  Very compelling.  It uses spent uranium!  Turns a problem into a solution.  Why haven’t we heard of this before? 

“Innovation really stopped in this industry quite some time ago.  The idea that there are some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising.

People had talked about it for a long time, but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, and so it’s through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that yes, with the right materials approach, this looks like it would work.”

Another parallel!  Innovation in fusion also stopped some time ago.  And as noted above, there is a revival in fusion as well - due to advances in computational power (and theoretical insights). 

Note on Computational Power: perhaps the computational needs of fusion are greater than those for fission.  As one physicist noted,

How many CPU’s are there in the world, 1 per person? It would take 3 hours of the whole world’s computational capability to model 1 second of a proposed reactor’s operational scenarios. Thousands of scenarios have to be studied.

Don’t panic.  It’s not all about the computer.  You don’t have to model everything for advances to be made:

computers have limited creativity and insight and ... human ingenuity can, at present, do certain things much better than computers. If we waited for computers to understand internal combustion engines, my horse buggy whip business would still be thriving.

In any case:  the computational needs of fission v. fusion is an intriguing question.  This is another item for a panel discussion.  Gates is talking about frontier fission - not the kind that’s already been done. Perhaps it’s harder than we think. The 20 years to invent that he envisions includes a lot of as yet to be done computational work. For this to be a valid comparison, we need the fission CPU time requirements.  Either way, it’s win/win for Gates, and many of the other dot com philanthropists.  CPU time is a product they sell, this looks like a money-making proposition for them.  Fusion needs computers!  As one physicist noted:

Indeed - for example Jaguar ( a 32k CPU cluster) in ORNL could really help our present research effort. 300k$/yr for a computer plasma physicist and  5% of its annual CPU hours.

OK, so now, Gates has let us know that innovation is back on track, and we’ve got computers - so it should be really cheap, and any day now.  But wait!  This terrapower thing is not a done deal.  (this comes up in the Q&A session, 18 minutes into the video):

Scale of investment:  To do the software, supercomputer, hire great scientists - only tens of millions.  Even once we test our materials out in a Russian reactor to make sure that the materials work properly, then you’ll only be Hundreds of millions.  The tough thing is building a pilot reactor, Several billion, regulator, location.  Once you get the first one built, and it works as advertised, then it’s plain as day - the economics, energy density are so different than nuclear as we know it.

OK, so how is this different from the estimates of most fusion concepts?  That’s the same song and dance for fusion.  Actually, at the ICC there was quite a range of expected investment needs, depending on the device or theory being tested.  Some were quite modest - others quite ambitious.  And they all start modestly and only require the greater sums as they approach viability and need to design pilot reactors. 

[We need to determine the number here.  What would be the annual expenditure for research for all these physicists in the room, assuming that most of these guys are at that first phase.  I heard estimates ranging from 30 to 150 million per year, which is pretty modest.  LPP is only 1 million a year at this phase, more at phase 2 because of the need to hire more people and build new things.]

But this fission that Gates is excited about must be much closer to completion, right? 

Time scale:  20 years to invent, 20 to deploy.  [Fission in 40 years!  Where have I heard that before - oh- fusion.]  Terrapower, if things go well, which is wishing for a lot, could easily meet that.

“If things go well.”  Thank you Gates.  Yes,  there are no guarantees in fission, either.  This same risk scenario - a long term investment - it’s there for fission, as it is for fusion. 

And yet, he takes the fission bait.  More - he wants HUNDREDS of similar projects launched.  He says it: 

There are, fortunately now, dozens of companies, we need it to be hundreds, who likewise, if their science goes well, if the funding for their pilot plants goes well,  that they can compete for this.  And it’s best if multiples succeed, because then you could use a mix of these things.  We certainly need one to succeed.

Let’s stop and do some math here.  Gates has just said that the project he’s funding is a 40 year project (and not because that’s how long they think it will take realistically -but because that’s how long it MUST take given environmental urgency, as he said elsewhere.)

He also says that it will cost money in 3 stages:
1) initial computational stage _ tens of millions
2) testing reactor and materials _ hundreds of millions
3) pilot reactor _ PILOT reactor _ several billion.

And he wants hundreds of these - so let me see, that’s:
1) hundreds of tens of millions = billions
2) hundreds of hundreds of millions = tens of billions)
3) hundreds of several billions = hundreds of billions (equivalent to the money spent bombing Afghanistan)

Of course, we’d end up weeding a lot of things out at steps one and two.  So really, tens of billions ought to cover it, if we take that diversified approach.

Wow.  Someone with vision and the sense to diversify research approaches.  In contrast to the zero-sum funding for the fusion community, Bill Gates points out how to innovatively tackle big hairy problems. 

More inspiring words from Gates:

An energy breakthrough is the most important thing.  It would have been, even without the environmental constraint, but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater.

Here, he acknowledges and encourages competing approaches:

In the nuclear space there are other innovators.  We don’t know their work as well as we know this one.  ...the modular people…there’s a liquid type reactor, seems a little hard, but maybe they say that about us.

We all think (or at least hope) our own approach will work - but we should all support alternative approaches as we might actually benefit from it. 

Then Gates says:

The beauty of this is that a molecule of uranium has a million times as much energy as a molecule of coal.  If you can deal with the negatives, which is essentially the radiation, the footprint and cost is… in a class of its own.

Tears come to my eyes.  The energy in a molecule of WATER is even greater than uranium if you can figure out fusion.  Likewise, if you figure out ANEUTRONIC fusion, there are essentially NO negatives to deal with.  The most IDEAL energy, and it’s just a few policies, investments and hundreds of experiments away.  The experiments are standing by.  Waiting for funding.  Waiting….  waiting….

Rewinding to before the Q&A, Gates harps on this innovation theme.  I want fusion policy makers to take notes here.  Gates says that a crucial consideration that is often overlooked in our energy+CO2 crisis is:

the pace of innovation on these breakthroughs, we need to move those breakthroughs at full speed, and we can measure that in terms of companies, pilot projects, regulatory things that have been changed.  A lot of great books have been written about this.  [he cites Al Gore!] [we need to]...create a framework that this can be discussed broadly.  We need broad backing for this.  There’s a lot that has to come together.

OK Fusion people, he’s talking about us.  Well, he’s talking about fission, but it applies. 

The sad thing is that the fusion community has fallen so short of its ideals that Bill Gates, one of the richest, most successful men on earth, is reduced to wishing for FISSION to work! 

This is a wish.  A very concrete wish that we invent this technology.  If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 yearsìthat I can choose the president, develop a vaccine, or I can pick this thing that’s half the cost, with no co2 to get invented,  - this is the wish I would pick.  This is the one with the greatest impact.  If we don’t get this wish the division between the people who think short term and long term will be terrible, the division between US and China, between poor countries and rich, and most of all, the, lives of those 2 billion [in poverty] will be far worse.

Actually, he’s worded this well.  A fusion concept could fulfill this wish.  It just has to work and be half the cost of energy today.  The “no CO2” thing is a given.  So, we’ll just wish for funding, while he wishes for this thing to be invented.  Oh, please, won’t someone introduce us?

OK, Gates, to wrap up:  what do we need to do on the innovation front?

We need to go for more research funding.  When countries get together in places like Copenhagen, they shouldn’t just discuss the co2, they should discuss this innovation agenda,  You’d be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches.

Yes, I am indeed stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on innovative approaches, on the ridiculous placing of all the fusion eggs in two baskets, the pervasive sense that it’s a zero-sum funding game, and this lack of confidence in human ingenuity.  Fusion is possible, but it’s certainly not going to come to someone in a dream.  You’re going to have to spend some money, and try some approaches and get your hands dirty and work it out.

Tell us more, Gates:

We need to get the message out, We need to have this dialogue be a more rational, more understandable dialogue, including the steps that the government takes.  this is an important wish, but it is one I think we can achieve.

Amen.

And to those zero-sum folk who think we don’t have the money for this, Gates says:

Actual spending on the r’n'd piece, say the US should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now.  It’s not that dramatic, it shouldn’t take a way from other thingsì The R+D piece, it’s crazy how little it’s funded.

Crazy, indeed.

Now to get Bill Gates to see how this applies to fusion as well.  But before we can get him to see it, we have to get the House of Fusion to see it.  Their own internal strategy is having a chilling effect on funding for fusion.

Gates is not a fusion advocate, probably because of the message he received when asking the folks at the top of the fusion heap what they thought [I suspect, but I have to confirm with the man himself if he was referring to fusion here]:

The thing you get into big money on, ...when you have something that’s non-economic, and you’re trying to fund that, that to me, is mostly a waste.  ...I believe we should try more things that have the potential to be far less expensive.  If the tradeoff you get into is let’s make energy super expensive, then, the rich can afford that.  The disaster is for that two billion [people in poverty].  ìFund things that have a potential to make the price of energy go down.

I’d like to say that I think it’s possible that some of those bright physicists at PPPL last week might be on to something.  I sensed they were capable, creative, and passionate about their work.  These are people who are committed to the science of fusion, to teasing out its secrets.  But they have bills to pay, and are not being let loose on these projects.

Fusion is, indeed, a bigger problem than any other.  It’s much harder to bring things together than to tear them apart.  If fusion can bring its own community together in a way that supports the diversity of approaches - it may be able to pull off the leap to fusion