What will a Fusion Energy to Electricity Project look like?

DEMO phase of ITER will generate electricity by 2035?

This blog focuses on Fusion Energy to Electricity and not other applications like propulsion of space vehicles or weapons.

The current phase of ITER https://www.iter.org/ (30 billion dollars over decades) is experimental and will not capture any energy for electricity. ITER is located in France and is a cooperative effort of the major political powers of the world. Most physicists believe that "get big or go home" is the answer to creating a successful fusion energy to electricity project. ITER will be so large because plasma confinement/burn time is proportional to the cube of the size of the containment vessel. Plasma burns that are a tiny fraction of a second make continuous operation difficult.

The DEMO Phase (similar budget to ITER - 2035?) will be a prototype that hopefully is successful enough to be manufactured into production units by 2050. A 1GigaWatt (7billion kWattHr per year) fusion plant would input100Kg Deuterium and 3 tons of Lithium as the only input raw materials; water and dirt cheap compared to the facility capital cost and maintenance. Also assumed is that the facility will "breed" it's own tritium to become part of the plasma. A small amount of Tritium will be needed along with Deuterium supplied externally to kick start the fusion reaction. Neutrons from fusion of Deuterium and Tritium will react with Lithium used in the walls of the reactor vessel to "breed" Tritium that will be recycled to the plasma for continued fusion.

Enough dreaming, now back to reality! A successful fusion energy reaction requires at least 100 million degrees Celsius, the proper vacuum and plasma ion concentration and confinement time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMpEtP245A). This video also shows that current thinking is that reactors do not necessarily need to be big to be successful.

So far all fusion test reactions have fizzled before a sustained reaction. Most people have at some time had difficulty starting a lawn mower or a car and experienced the frustration of failure to achieve ignition. For scientists overseeing fusion research, failure to "ignite" plasma is a full time frustration. The most successful reactor to date is the JET https://www.euro-fusion.org/devices/jet/ in Culham England. In 1997 it was 67% of the way to ignition or Q=1. Q is the amount fusion energy output of a reactor divided by the energy input to start ignition. It is the energy break even point. The longest continuous fusion reaction to date is about 70 seconds in a Korean reactor. Longer times are rumoured from China but they are very secretive about their work. This is like cranking your car starter for 70 seconds to find it is not running. ITER's goal is first fusion by 2015 and Q>10; 50MegaWatts of energy in and 500 MegaWatts of energy out.