energy technology that produces vast quantities of energy with extremely small quantities of waste and a virtually limitless supply of fuel.

It sounds too good to be true, right?

But today's guest says that technology is coming with dozens of startups getting into the space and driving innovation that may just prove to be revolutionary.

He's Andrew Holland.

This week on "Story in the Public Square."

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest today is an old friend and colleague from my days in DC.

Andrew Holland is the founding CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, and he joins us today from Washington.

Andrew, thank you for being with us.

- Jim, great to be with you and good to see you, old friend.

- You know, I've been watching fusion passively, as you know, for about 15 years now.

You've been much more intimately involved in both the policy side, but also now in the development of a real viable private sector economy around this technology.

But for the uninitiated, the folks who maybe have only heard about this in movies and comic books, what is fusion energy?

- Yeah, very simply put, and we could spend an hour on this if we wanted to, but very simply put, fusion is the power of the sun and the stars.

It is Einstein's famous equation.

E equals MC squared, which means that in any amount of mass, there's a tremendous amount of energy locked into it.

So what happens in fusion energy is you take light atoms, hydrogen or helium generally, and at extreme pressures and temperatures, they combine, they fuse together.

And in that process, a small amount of matter is turned into energy, tremendous amounts of energy.

So we see it, you know, just look up in the sky, we know it works.

The sun is created with fusion energy.

It's a gravity reactor, a fusion energy machine.

But here on earth, it's different.

We can't use the sun to make energy.

So we have to use either large magnets, lasers, various other sort of confinement technologies to get that fusion reaction to happen, to get up to those extreme temperatures and pressures that then allow that energy to come out.

It is the holy grail of energy.

It is the long-term way that humanity will produce energy.

It's the most efficient, has the least risk, least amount of fuel required.

It really is the thing that we've all been working towards.

- And so practically speaking, we're talking about generating electricity.

- Correct.

- And it's the same method though.

We're creating hot material that's gonna boil water, and then we're gonna use that steam to turn a turbine, or is it something more exotic?

- In the first generations, it will be basically the same as we've been doing since, you know, the 1700s and steam engines, a centralized heat source then creates steam, runs a generator.

As we get better at this, there are direct energy conversion methods of doing this.

But those are probably a little further out, though there are some companies that are working in that space.

- So, Andrew, does fusion produce waste?

And I'm thinking waste that you have from burning, you know, carbon-based fossil fuels.

- Yeah, it's a really important question because fusion is, at its heart, it's a nuclear reaction, right?

You're not burning anything.

So there's no smoke, there's no pollution that comes out of it.

In the most basic reaction, two isotopes of hydrogen come together and they form helium, right?

And so helium is your primary waste product.

Now, also, it creates a fast neutron as well.

And so that neutron does interact with the environment, and it does create an irradiated surface.

And so that means at the end of a fusion machine's lifetime, it is hot in the terms of it's radioactive, right?

But it's similar in radiation to medical facilities, things in hospitals.

So that means that it can be disposed of by being buried under something like five or six inches of dirt, instead of like nuclear fission facilities where the waste has to be buried in deep geological facilities for millennia.

This is fundamentally a different process with a much different risk profile here.

So there is no CO2 emissions.

There is no long-term, long-lived radioactive waste.

It's really an important and clean technology.

- What would it do for climate change?

Which, of course, is a grave concern for our planet.

- It would solve it, simply put.

(all laugh) - Yeah, bring it on.

- [Jim] We're done here.

- You know, there's this common phrase in kind of the climate community.

"Oh, there's no silver bullets."

Well, fusion is a silver bullet.

That said, fusion is hard.

There's a reason that we don't have fusion power plants already, right?

Fusion has been something that scientists have been working on for 50, 60 years at this point.

And we don't have fusion power plants because we haven't been able to get to that sort of crack the code moment where we can do it efficiently enough to do it in a repetitive manner.

That said, we've gotten a long way there.

There's often kind of this thought that, "Well, if you haven't gotten there, then what are we even doing?"

The truth is, is that we've gotten a long way there.

And in fact, in December 2022, for the first time ever on earth, we got more energy out of a controlled fusion reaction than was put into it.

This was at the National Ignition Facility in Lawrence Livermore, California.

It, for the first time ever, more energy out than in, a fusion gain, essentially.

And so that is, for us, the Wright brothers moment.

That's when the airplane first took off.

Wright brothers didn't sell any airplanes for many years afterwards.

I think about eight, nine years afterwards.

But this has been proven, and now multiple companies right now are working on their proof of concept machine, their airplanes to get them to fly.

And so we're in this phase where we're transitioning from the science, the research labs, into the marketplace, into companies actually doing this.

- You know, we wanna get into, because, obviously, you're the founding CEO of the Fusion Energy Association.

We wanna talk about some of that commercialization and some of those corporate players.

But, I guess, what are the principle barriers left to commercialization?

What's standing between us right now and that future with a clean, virtually limitless supply of energy from fusion?

- Yeah, first, we've gotta build it, right?

So companies right now are actually building these machines and these proof of concept machines, and these will show that they can do the fusion reaction, they can do the breakeven fusion, and then the next step after is to put it into a pilot plant to generate electricity from it.

Those proof of concept machines are not going to be the commercial electricity generators.

The next step then is to build pilot plants and prove that you can do this in an electricity generating way.

And to be able to do that, there's a couple of key things, technology things that we have to do.

Number one is we have to make sure that the materials are ready and able to survive in this extreme environment.

You know, I mentioned it, you have to get up to extreme temperatures and pressures.

So it's 100 million degrees C which is pretty hot.

- [Wayne] Whoa.

- Now, it's low density.

It's not like there's a huge amount of energy within the chamber at any one time.

But to get to that 100 million degrees C and the neutrons, the fast neutrons, you have to be able to prove that the steel or the titanium or the tungsten, whatever you do as your first wall can survive for a long time.

So we have to have to work on material science.

And number two is we have to work on the fuel cycle.

Now, most but not all fusion companies are looking at a deuterium-tritium fuel cycle.

And we know theoretically that we can generate the tritium that we can then reinject into the chamber and get the fusion reaction in a kind of closed loop cycle.

But we've never done it.

So we have to prove out that we can do that, again, in a commercially viable way.

So these are things that are common challenges across multiple different technologies and companies.

So actually these are things that are appropriate for governments to work on.

And so US Department of Energy, and actually in partnership with other countries like the UK, Japan, European Union, are all working together on.

China, of course, is working on its own program and has a different way forward here.

But we'll go into that in a little bit, I'm sure.

- So the fact that an industry is emerging here, to use your analogy, means that there are companies that believe we can go from Wright brothers to a transatlantic jet.

- That's right.

- Bad analogy that I made up, but you get the point.

Who are some of the companies that are involved?

And you've mentioned a number of different countries.

This is not simply an American industry, correct?

- Right, that's right.

So within the FIA, we have 37 member companies.

They range in size and scale, from companies that have raised billions of dollars and have 100s or over 1000 employees to those companies that have raised a couple hundred thousand dollars and a couple people in a garage basically.

But the leading companies, the ones that who've raised the most and are building those proof of concept machines, include Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

A couple of companies in the Seattle, Washington area, Helion Energy, Avalanche Energy, and Zap Energy.

TAE Technologies in Southern California.

General Fusion in Canada.

Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion in the UK.

In Germany, there's Proxima Fusion, Gauss Fusion, Focused Energy, Marvel Energy.

So it is a global marketplace, but I do wanna make clear that this is, at this point, an American-led industry.

There's about a $8 billion invested into the private sector companies.

Of that 8 billion, about 6 billion is invested into American located companies.

And of our 37 member companies, I think 24 are American-based.

So, you know, I think there's something about the nature of American investors, American entrepreneurialism and actually, ironically, kind of the failure of DOE to invest in commercialization that has forced scientists into looking for other ways to get there.

So it's kind of a good news story here in the United States, but other countries are moving fast to try and both cooperate and compete to get there first.

- Yeah, Andrew, in getting ready for this episode, I was looking through the Fusion Energy Association's most recent survey of the industry.

And in it, there is a really interesting timeline that shows the origin date of different fusion technology companies.

And it looks like from about 2017 to about 2022, there's a real explosion.

So maybe that's the wrong metaphor.

But there's a significant growth in the number of fusion companies operating.

- Yeah.

- What happened in 2017?

- It's a good question.

It is almost like a Cambrian explosion sort of thing where there was, I don't know, five or six companies before that.

I think what happened in 2017 was there finally became an understanding that the science is good enough that we know that the next machine we make will be that breakeven fusion machine.

And then combine that with all of the other sort of technology advances like AI and machine learning and high-speed computing, new materials.

The key thing for about half of the companies in the magnetically confined space is high temperature superconducting wire.

And what that means is actually it allows you to build more powerful magnets.

The most powerful magnets in the world have been built by fusion companies, 20 Tesla magnets.

What that means is it's a magnet that you could, if you had a crane strong enough, you could pick up an aircraft carrier- - [Wayne] Wow.

- With that magnet.

So the most powerful magnets in the world are being put into this, using these new technologies and new abilities to do this.

So the investors finally came around and said, "Wait, this could work.

And if it does work, this is the bonanza of all bonanzas."

There's been an estimate out there from, I think "Bloomberg Businessweek," put out saying $40 trillion industry.

So if you think this is gonna get there, there becomes kind of a fear of missing out moment from investors.

That if you're not invested in it, you're gonna miss out.

- Wow, you know, you mentioned, I'm getting my mind around $40 trillion, but you mentioned a couple of different technological approaches to achieving fusion.

You know, for the non-scientific among us, I'm looking at Wayne and I here, what are those different technological approaches?

- Yeah, I mean, by the way, I'm not a scientist, right?

But having been around these guys enough, I can tell you it basically runs a spectrum.

From at one end there's low density plasma at very high temperatures, and that's magnetically confined fusion.

So that's like you building tokamak accelerators.

This is your Commonwealth Fusion Systems, your Tokamak Energy, your Type One Energy.

These companies are building steady state machines, basically like a furnace.

And then at the other end is inertial confinement fusion using the largest, most powerful lasers in the world to focus on a very small target of fusion fuel that then they hit for a very, very short amount of time, nanoseconds.

And in that time collapses it, and then it explodes and creates that fusion burn.

That's the National Ignition Facility.

That's the one approach that has been proven so far to work.

And then within that spectrum, there's multiple other ways of doing it that kind of go in the density to temperature range.

And so there's a company, General Fusion, that uses pistons and a lead lithium, liquid metal wall, to collapse a plasma.

There's another one, Zap Energy uses, it's called a Z-pinch.

But, basically, what it is, is it uses an electrical pulse to confine it.

So there's multiple different ways of doing this confinement and getting there.

There's a whole family tree almost of fusion approaches and everything.

The most understood, most well understood approaches are those two extreme ends.

The laser fusion and the magnetically confined fusion in a tokamak because that's where governments have focused for such a long time.

And what's happened in this sort of Cambrian explosion moment was the private sector companies saying, "I think there's another way, and I think we should give it a try and give it a shot to get there."

So what's happening is you've got multiple shots on goal, and unlike in the past where it was just those one or two approaches and if it fails, it fails, the whole thing fails.

Now, you have kind of this let 1000 flowers bloom market-based approach.

Many of them are gonna fail.

Many of them are not going to get to that sort of, you know, break even business moment.

But because there's so many different ways of getting there, I'm pretty confident that we will get there on a timeframe that matters and is relevant to our climate challenges, our energy security challenges, and all these.

- So when the technology is ready to go online and plants are gonna be proposed to be built, have you given any thought to what local communities will think of having a plant in their community?

I mean, I can foresee people, A, being afraid, B, not understanding what the technology is, and so forth and so on.

And I can also see people equating it with nuclear plants today.

What are your thoughts on that, Andrew?

- Yeah, it's really important because this only works if the public wants it, right?

If you have a science experiment and everybody's going to protest against it, you're never gonna get it built out.

And we think actually this is the reason that fusion will be able to deploy so fast to actually meet that extreme climate challenge, because we think that the public will welcome it and will want it because it's evidence so far is the companies that have built things, you know, after deep and direct engagement with the local communities, the communities have really welcomed it.

You look in the Everett, Washington area that has two companies.

The mayor of Everett is all in on this.

And the jobs and industrial base that is coming into this is really driving a lot of excitement there.

Same thing in areas like in Oxfordshire in the UK has become almost this like fusion center, this fusion hub, because there's so many workers with good jobs there as well as these budding proof of concept machines that, you know, you do the effort, you have to do the outreach, you have to really engage with the public.

I'll note one of our companies just announced that they would build their first pilot plant in Virginia, just outside of Richmond.

And they made that announcement, but they spent months, a year prior to it, doing community meetings, talking with local stakeholders, local political leaders, making sure that people actually did want this.

So at the local level, it's really important.

And then, you know, at the national level, the global level, this is where the FIA kind of leans in.

We have to make sure that the education level is up among people to say, "Hey, this is really important and we want it to come."

So, you know, we work with the policy leaders in Congress and in administrations as well as kind of getting that education message out around the world.

- Well, and this is I think a natural follow up, but you're describing technology that's maturing and becoming ripe, you're describing a growing private sector ecosystem around it.

Is there a regulatory framework?

We're talking about energy production, it's a regulated industry no matter what the technology is.

Is there a regulatory framework in place for fusion energy as it begins to approach the marketplace?

- Yeah, so here in the United States, anything that's radioactive is regulated under the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

But there's a whole spectrum within the NRC of how you do that.

They regulate nuclear fission power plants in a really tight way, because, what the technical term is, it's of the common defense and security of the United States.

These nuclear power plants, the fuel within them can be turned into weapons.

And the consequences of an accident at a nuclear power plant are so severe that the regulations have to be so high.

And so we've engaged for the last five, six years really in a process with the NRC to say, "Fusion is not nuclear fission.

The risks are not high.

It's not of an impact to the common defense and security of the United States.""

And we submitted a lot of materials, we did a lot of engagement in public on this.

And a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, "Right, we agree fusion is going to be regulated separately from nuclear fission.

It's going to be regulated the same as a medical isotope facility, an accelerator."

And so what that means is that actually the day-to-day regulations in the United States will be done at the state level.

So the agreement states will say, "We'll regulate this.

We'll approve your license.

We'll be the ones who go and do the inspections," just like they do for research facilities today and all of that.

It really is, it's risk appropriate to the level of risk.

So we think that's really the most appropriate way forward.

And it's opened up a lot of investment and certainty in this because, you know, the first question that investors would ask is, "Okay, what's your regulatory regime?"

And if it's the same as nuclear fission, why shouldn't I just invest in a fission power plant that we know works?

So being in a separate one is really important to that.

- Do you have a sense, and I understand that there's some basic, there's still more engineering and more science to be done here, but are we talking about a 10-year horizon?

Are we talking about a 20-year horizon?

When might we actually begin to hear about some of these breakthroughs that we've been talking about here today?

- Yeah, so we ask our companies this every year in our survey.

We say, "Okay, when do you expect to see fusion energy on the grid?"

And we've asked this for four years running now, and it has continued to be by and large, overwhelmingly in the 2030s or before, with the vast mature majority of the companies saying the first half of the 2030s.

- [Jim] Wow.

- [Wayne] Wow.

- Last I checked, it's 2025 now, so that's 10 years or sooner.

And so that's companies producing electricity on the grid, pilot plants, and then moving quickly to commercial power plants.

And so if you kind of walk that back, what that means is that right now companies are building these proof of concept machines.

So, you know, don't judge us by our promises, judge us by our results, right?

So first thing to look for is, do these proof of concept machines work?

Multiple companies building these will be announcing results in the next couple of years.

And then they'll move into building these pilot plants, siting, building, and moving forward with getting these to work.

So then does it work, and then does it produce electricity?

And then the third question is, does it produce electricity economically?

Can it compete in the marketplace?

You know, this is the end point here is that fusion is this huge great technological hurdle, technological breakthrough.

But in the end, we're producing a commodity, we're producing electricity just like everyone else.

And so you have to be able to prove that you can sell that at a rate that people are gonna buy it.

- Andrew Holland, Fusion Industry Association.

It's rare that we end an episode on happy news.

So thank you so much.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about the show, you can find us on social media.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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