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THE BASICS: Scientists at one of the Energy Department’s national labs have reportedly achieved net energy gain during a nuclear fusion reaction, passing a major landmark on the road to the commercialization of fusion energy.
Achieving and maintaining net energy gain is fundamental to the future of fusion if it is to become a viable source of carbon-free electricity, as it means the reaction’s thermal power output exceeds the power needed to maintain it — i.e. it can make money.
Officials inside DOE and Lawrence Livermore National Lab, site of the National Ignition Facility where the achievement took place, are keeping formal announcement of the “breakthrough” of net energy gain under wraps until tomorrow.
What’s going on at LLNL: The National Ignition Facility’s mandate includes studying fusion reactions using laser technologies to simulate the fusion that fuels stars, including the sun.
The newest breakthrough follows an experiment at the facility last year, where LLNL neared “ignition,” or a production of an excess of energy. The test output generated 70% of the energy used to trigger the reaction.
Here’s how LLNL described that experiment: “The experiment was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF — the size of three football fields — onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second.”
To bring it around, the agenda is to generate greater than 100% of the energy put into the reaction. Scientists refer to that ratio between input and output as the Q value. In the new breakthrough, the experiment reportedly generated around 120% of the energy in the lasers.
Data from the experiment are undergoing analysis, according to the Financial Times, which originally published the news yesterday.
Fusion in brief: Nuclear fusion, unlike its brother fission, involves the uniting rather than the splitting of atoms to produce energy.
There are two different branches of fusion: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement.
The LLNL’s experimentation uses inertial confinement, while other ventures, including the Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Massachusetts Institute of Technology-designed SPARC project, as well as United Kingdom-based Tokamak Energy, utilize magnetic confinement to maintain superheated plasma and replicate a fusion environment.
Some industry perspective: The industry will have to aspire to much more than Q > 1 if fusion is going to achieve commercial viability, Tokamak CEO Chris Kelsall told Jeremy last week — before the FT’s story went live.
“The headline grab of Q greater than one net energy gain is out there. That’s almost iconic now as a target, but it’s not sufficient for commercial fusion,” Kelsall said. “To get to commercial fusion, Q will need to be greater than 10, probably in the mid- to high teens.”
“Once you take into account the other energy requirements for a power plant system, the heating systems, Q greater than one at reaction level is not commercial fusion,” he said. “I think it’s really important that the market understands we need to go further than that.”
Tune in tomorrow for more about Tokamak — and why Kelsall sees greater promise in his brand of fusion.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
WINTER FREEZE TIGHTENS GRIP ON EUROPE, INCREASING ENERGY DEMAND: European cities recorded another day of freezing temperatures today as a cold front tightened its grip across the continent, increasing demand for stored gas and on France’s nuclear power sector, with saw demand rise to its highest point all winter.
Energy demand in France surpassed 80 GW this morning, power operator RTE said, a record-high this year, which it met using 41 GW of its own nuclear generation, hydropower, and imports from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain.
France’s nuclear industry has struggled to come online at full force this winter due to longer-than-expected repairs and stress corrosion that have sent its nuclear capacity plummeting to a 30-year-low.
MEANWHILE, BRITAIN BRACES FOR A SHORT-TERM ENERGY CRUNCH: Natural gas consumption in the UK soared to nearly a two-year high today amid freezing temperatures and low wind supply that forced it to rely on the fuel for roughly 60% of its power, according to grid data.
Britain’s National Grid also issued start-up instructions that would allow it to bring online two old coal-fired power plants to augment the strained capacity, though the request was later canceled.
EU GAS MARKETS ARE ‘NOT OUT OF THE DANGER ZONE,’ IEA WARNS: The EU’s historic efforts to reduce gas consumption and fill its storage tanks ahead of winter provided the bloc with an important buffer heading into this winter, but will not be sufficient to make up for lost Russian supplies in 2023, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.
Though the EU reduced its gas consumption by 50 billion cubic meters this year, the report said the cuts are not enough for future winters—warning that the bloc could face a supply-demand gap of 27 bcm in 2023 if Russia halts gas deliveries and China’s LNG imports return to 2021 levels.
A major push toward efficiency, renewables, and heat pumps is vital to helping reduce the size of the supply-demand gap in the EU, the report said, as is a recovery of output from nuclear and hydropower from their decade-low levels seen in 2022.
On the supply side, the IEA says there are “a handful of countries with spare export capacity” that could increase exports by capturing gas that is currently being flared, and details opportunities to scale up production of low-emission biogases.
“Together, these measures offer a pathway to avoiding price spikes, factory closures, increased use of coal for power g
eneration and fierce international competition for LNG cargoes – in ways that are consistent with the EU’s climate goals,” the report says. Read more here.
TOP WHITE HOUSE ENERGY ADVISER ALSO SEES LONG-TERM PAIN FOR EU: Amos Hochstein said in an interview with the Financial Times this weekend that the loss of Russian piped gas imports means that more energy market turmoil is “likely,” especially in Europe, for years to come.
Many of the circumstances that allowed the EU to fill their storage sites this year are not expected to be available in 2023. That means the “mountain to climb [to build] gas stockpiles for next year is much higher,” he said.
In addition, he noted that extra LNG supplies are also dependent on plants being built in the U.S. and Qatar—and which are not expected to come online until closer to 2030. “We are really preparing and living from an energy perspective, in Europe and beyond, in a hand to mouth, step by step [way],” Hochstein said.
ICYMI – HOCHSTEIN CALLS SHALE INVESTORS ‘UN-AMERICAN’: President Joe Biden‘s top energy envoy also took aim at shale investors, saying that they are “un-American” for not ramping up drilling more.
“I think that the idea that financiers would tell companies in the United States not to increase production and to buy back shares and increase dividends when the profits are at all-time highs is outrageous,” Hochstein told the Financial Times. “It is not only un-American, it is so unfair to the American public.”
He also criticized ExxonMobil’s newly announced stock buyback scheme, by which it will distribute more cash to shareholders this quarter than it invests in new production.
(Exxon CEO Darren Woods, whose company posted record-high earnings of $19.7 billion in Q3, has reportedly described its buyback program as a way of returning dividends back to the people.)
But Hochstein sharply dismissed that. “The only thing worse than announcing a share buyback is to say that is how you’re giving profits back to the American people,” he said.
KEYSTONE PIPELINE RESTART DATE UNCLEAR, PROMPTING CONCERN: Operators of the Keystone oil pipeline have not yet announced when cleanup will be complete on a 14,000 barrel oil spill discovered in Kansas last week—prompting fears of an extended delay that could hurt U.S. refiners.
The leak forced operator TC Energy to order an emergency shutdown for the entire Keystone pipeline, which ships heavy crude from Canada to the U.S. at a maximum capacity of 622,000 barrels per day. Officials have not yet determined the cause of the breach.
But any prolonged outage of the line, which sends oil to the Midwest and U.S. Gulf Coast, could put a dent in U.S. inventories at a time when oil inventories are already at a critical low point. “For the most part, there is concern in the trading community [that the pipeline] is not up yet,” a U.S.-based dealer told Reuters.
Since discovering the leak, TC Energy has worked alongside the EPA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, sending more than 250 personnel to the site to assess damage and begin repair planning.
Plans for return-to-service “continue to be evaluated,” it said in a statement.
ICYMI: NEW EPA RULEMAKING WOULD PHASE OUT HFC USE: The Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations Friday to phase out the use of 18 different potent hydrofluorocarbons in refrigeration and other common products.
The rulemaking, the latest in a suite of rules the Biden administration has introduced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was proposed under Congress’s direction in the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act — bipartisan legislation passed in 2020 authorizing the EPA to limit or prohibit the use of HFCs in specific sectors and to phase in manufacturing requirements.
Read more here.
The Rundown
New York Times In a future filled with electric cars, AM radio may be left behind
Bloomberg Oil wells creeping into Texas cities herald shale era’s twilight
E&E News Takeaways from the Democrats’ Big Oil investigation
Calendar
TUESDAY | DECEMBER 13
10 a.m. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the Interior Department’s implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
