Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center

Fusion technology faces many challenges if it is to play a future role in producing low-carbon energy. Public trust in fission technology has been impacted by accidents and perceived risks but by contrast, fusion has much working in its favor. Fusion doesn’t rely on a chain reaction process, and avoids the potential for accidental releases of highly radioactive fission products. Furthermore, most fusion designs rely on fuel sources that are nearly unlimited, and the technology does not generate high-level waste. This addresses one of the problems to wider deployment of fission, which is that although nuclear waste storage and disposal may be more political than technical, it has not been solved in the United States. Similarly, the possibility of building a foundation for the social acceptance of fusion underlies its potential to solve multiple challenges for low-carbon energy: balancing a future grid, mitigating the need for a broad expansion of transmission infrastructure or storage solutions, and decarbonizing sectors that are challenging for renewable energy sources. However, for fusion to achieve these goals will take careful work between the public and private sectors to further develop the technology, while assuring its proper regulation, public acceptance, and certainly its affordability. In this presentation, we will examine a number of the technical and policy challenges for fusion energy development and discuss the role of the public sector in supporting development given the rapid growth of the commercial fusion industry. These tools and approaches provide insights into new energy concepts and support the analysis of energy system interactions at the plant, regional, national and global scales. The speaker will highlight examples to pertinent electricity sector issues as the generation mix of the United States continues to change.

Dr. Michael Ford is the Associate Laboratory Director for Engineering at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and is also an affiliated Research Scholar at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University. Dr. Ford leads the pursuit of PPPL’s mission to develop advanced fusion engineering knowledge and techniques and is responsible for all engineering support throughout the Laboratory. His efforts include leadership of fusion technology research that will further the development of fusion pilot plants with a focus on optimizing designs for commercial fusion systems. Supported research spans diverse areas such as HTS magnets, fusion diagnostics, and the development of digital engineering tools. He also leads Lab efforts in nonproliferation and regulatory assessment for fusion. Dr. Ford remains active in fission research and from 2021-23 served on the committee for the most recent National Academy of Engineering study on advanced fission entitled “Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Reactors in the US.” He is a past member of the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee supporting the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy. Dr. Ford served a full career as a nuclear trained US Navy Officer and earned his PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He conducted postdoctoral research as an Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment.