[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AN OVERVIEW OF FUSION ENERGY SCIENCE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
April 20, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-74
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ZOE LOFGREN, California
Wisconsin DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
STEVE KNIGHT, California PAUL TONKO, New York
BRIAN BABIN, Texas MARK TAKANO, California
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
GARY PALMER, Alabama
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois
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Subcommittee on Energy
HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
STEPHAN KNIGHT, California ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
April 20, 2016
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 5
Written Statement............................................ 7
Statement by Representative Alan Grayson, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 9
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 11
Written Statement............................................ 12
Witnesses:
Dr. Bernard Bigot, Director General, ITER Organization
Oral Statement............................................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 17
Dr. Stewart Prager, Director, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 28
Written Statement............................................ 30
Dr. Scott Hsu, Scientist, Physics Division, Los Alamos National
Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 38
Written Statement............................................ 40
Discussion....................................................... 38
Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record
Letter submitted by Representative Katherine M. Clark, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 78
Documents submitted by Dr. Bernard Bigot, Director General, ITER
Organization................................................... 80
Statement submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 83
AN OVERVIEW OF FUSION ENERGY SCIENCE
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m., in
Room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Randy Weber
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairman Weber. The Subcommittee on Energy will come to
order.
And without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare
recesses of the Subcommittee at any time.
And we want to welcome you to today's hearing entitled ``An
Overview of Fusion Energy Science.'' I recognize myself for
five minutes.
Today, we will hear from a panel of experts on the status
of fusion energy science and learn about what can be done to
advance this research and technology looking forward. We have
two DOE national labs represented here today, as well as the
ITER Organization. These experts represent the world's efforts
to advance fusion energy science.
The Science Committee has bipartisan interest in fusion
energy research and development, and we look forward to hearing
from our witnesses today about the future of this very, very
exciting research.
Fusion energy science is groundbreaking because researchers
are working towards a goal that seems actually beyond reach: to
create a star on Earth, to contain it, and control it to the
point that we can convert the immense heat into electricity.
Fusion clearly is high-risk yet high-reward research and
development.
One of the Energy Subcommittee's key responsibilities is to
maintain oversight of the research activities within the Office
of Science. As the authorizing committee, we must also consider
the prospects of future research investments.
The DOE's current budget request for fiscal year 2017 is
approximately $398 million, a proposed cut from fiscal year
2016-enacted levels at $438 million.
Funding for fusion energy science has been on a downward
trend over the past few years. This sends a signal of
uncertainty to the fusion research community of America's
commitment to lead in this science. Congress must decide how to
effectively invest taxpayer dollars in basic research that
provides the scientific foundation for technologies that today
might seem impossible.
Today, we will hear testimony from Dr. Stewart Prager,
Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which is
the nation's preeminent lab in fusion science. Under his
leadership, Princeton's recent upgrade to its spherical
tokamak--I keep wanting to say tomahawk, and I know that's not
right--tokamak fusion reactor was completed on time and on
budget. Dr. Prager, can you teach Congress how to do that with
other programs?
I look forward to discussing with Dr. Prager what
opportunities exist for the United States to play a larger role
in fusion energy research and development.
I also look forward to hearing from Dr. Scott Hsu--am I
pronouncing that right, Dr. Hsu--of Los Alamos National
Laboratory. Dr. Hsu's work is a great example of how our
experts responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear
weapons stockpile can apply their knowledge for an alternate
use.
Of course, we're all interested to get a status update on--
is it ITER or ITER? ITER, okay. With the complexity of a
multinational collaboration like ITER, this project has faced
more challenges than most. The Department of Energy will
release its own assessment of this project in early May.
Fortunately, today, we have the opportunity to hear from
the Director General of the ITER project directly, Dr.
Bernard--is it Bigot?
Dr. Bigot. Certainly.
Chairman Weber. Okay. Dr. Bigot's track record as the ITER
Director General thus far has been stellar and inspiring. Dr.
Bigot, we look forward to your testimony today.
It is important that this committee continues to scrutinize
the progress of ITER to ensure that it remains a good
investment of taxpayer dollars. We must also consider the
importance of access to the ITER reactor for American
researchers and America's standing and credibility as a global
scientific collaborator. If the United States is going to lead
the world in cutting-edge science, we cannot take our
commitments to our international partners lightly, and we must
not undermine progress on these complex projects.
I want to thank our accomplished panel of witnesses for
testifying on fusion energy research and development today, and
I look forward to a productive discussion about this exciting
area of basic science.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Weber follows:]
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Chairman Weber. I'll now yield to the Ranking Member.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I welcome this distinguished panel of witnesses here today
to discuss a topic that is of critical importance to the future
of our nation and in fact the entire world.
Fusion energy has the potential to provide a practically
unlimited supply of safe, reliable, clean energy to us all.
While we've yet to achieve a viable fusion reactor, I believe
there's many paths that we have to do so. I also don't believe
that we're doing nearly enough to ensure that we're pursuing
the most promising approaches to achieve this goal quickly and
effectively as possible.
Fusion energy can be an enormous global boon to every
living human being, and it's going to happen. Whether it
happens five years from now or 50 years from now depends on the
decisions that we make and the work that you do.
That's why, while I appreciate the participation of both
the ITER Director General and the Director of the DOE's only
national laboratory dedicated to advancing fusion energy, I'm
also particularly pleased that we have Dr. Hsu here on the
panel this morning. He's the recipient of the largest award in
the recently established ARPA-E program that's examining the
potential for alternative innovative fusion energy concepts,
this one called magnetized target fusion, which may achieve net
energy production far sooner and with much lower capital costs
than conventional existing approaches. I also look forward to
hearing Dr. Hsu's thoughts on how the Department of Energy can
better support and assess the viability more generally of a
breakthrough approaches like this.
And I look forward to learning more about the progress that
ITER has made under Dr. Bigot's leadership to address
previously identified management deficiencies and to establish
a more reliable path forward for the project.
And finally, I look forward to Dr. Prager's views on how we
can and should regain or maintain U.S. leadership in fusion
energy development moving forward.
I think that this panel today goes right to the heart of
why we do the work we do in research in America through the
U.S. Government and otherwise. It's going to happen. Sooner or
later mankind will definitely, without any doubt, establish a
means to generate fusion energy and meet our energy needs this
way. The question is it's going to happen during our lifetimes
and our generation or the next generation or the one after
that. I prefer to see it happen in my generation, and I'll know
that when that does happen, I will feel very proud that we sat
here today, learned how to make that happen, and then did what
we needed to do to go ahead and to deliver this breakthrough
energy source to all mankind.
I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grayson follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Mr. Grayson.
I now recognize Chairman Smith, the Chairman of the full
committee. Mr. Smith?
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I appreciate both your opening statement and the
Ranking Member's longstanding interest in fusion energy. And I
tend to think he's correct; I hope it happens sooner rather
than later.
Today, we will hear about the status of fusion energy
research and development and the prospects of future scientific
discovery in fusion energy. The basic idea of fusion energy is
to create the equivalent of the power source of a star here on
Earth. The same nuclear reactions that occur in a star would be
recreated and controlled within a fusion reactor. The heat from
these reactions would ultimately be converted into renewable
and reliable electricity.
It has captured the imagination of scientists and engineers
for over half-a-century. At the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory, the National Spherical Torus Experiment enables
scientists from across the country to carry out experiments in
cutting-edge fusion research. Someday, the results of this
research may provide the scientific foundation for producing
power through fusion.
Other DOE labs also support fusion research. At Los Alamos
National Laboratory, our nuclear weapons researchers apply
their expertise to the development of innovation--innovative
fusion concepts.
The ultimate goal in fusion energy science is to provide a
sustainable, renewable, zero-emissions energy source. We cannot
say when fusion will be a viable part of our energy portfolio,
but we should support this critical science that could benefit
future generations.
One major step toward achieving this goal is ITER. The ITER
project is a multinational collaborative effort to build the
world's largest tokamak-type fusion reactor. The federal
government should invest in long-term challenging science
projects such as this, which will ensure America remains a
world leader in innovation.
Today, we will hear from the Director General of ITER, who
will provide an update on the project's advances and
challenges.
Basic research, such as fusion energy science, provides the
underpinnings for groundbreaking technology. This type of
energy R&D is still in its early stages and requires commitment
and leadership. Unfortunately, the President has not provided
the leadership that is necessary and has repeatedly cut funding
for fusion science. Despite the President's promises to support
clean energy R&D, his lack of support for fusion energy is more
than disappointing.
Fusion energy is the type of technology that could someday
change the way we think about energy. To maintain our
competitive advantage, we must continue to support the basic
research that will lead to next-generation energy technologies.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
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Chairman Smith. Before I yield back, I want to explain to
my colleagues and our expert panelists today that I have a
Judiciary Committee markup, so I'm going to have to excuse
myself but hope to be back. Thank you.
Chairman Weber. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
Our witnesses today--our first witness is Dr. Bernard
Bigot, Director General of the ITER Organization. Dr. Bigot
received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Claremont
McKenna College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Our next witness today is Dr. Stewart Prager, Director of
the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Dr. Prager received
his Ph.D. in plasma physics from Columbia University.
And our final witness today is Dr. Scott Hsu, scientist in
the Physics Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr.
Hsu received his Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from
Princeton.
I'm now going to recognize Dr. Bigot, Mr. Grayson, for five
minutes to present his testimony, and he's going to tell us
when they're going to get the fusion problem fixed.
Dr. Bigot, you're recognized for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. BERNARD BIGOT,
DIRECTOR GENERAL, ITER ORGANIZATION
Dr. Bigot. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman Weber,
Ranking Member Grayson, and distinguished--sorry. I would like
also to recognize the full committee Chairman Smith, which was
there a few minutes ago.
I'm grateful and deeply honored for this opportunity to
present to you the status of progress on the ITER project. May
I have the first slide?
[Slide.]
So you see on this slide the worksite, okay, we have
something old, which is the steel frame just in front of you,
and just behind is a tokamak pit. It was recorded in last
September, and I hope you will be able to view the video we
have prepared for you. It will show the real progress and the
very short time.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
As you know, the project started in 2007, and after nearly
ten years--it will be ten years, okay, on next January--it was
obvious for many that we have some organizational shortcoming.
And is why in a management assessment report, which has been
provided by Bill Madia, Dr. Bill Madia in 2013, they point out
some specific issue which have to be fixed.
This is why in early August 2014 I was questioned if I
could consider to take some responsibility in order to help
this project, and after nearly 12 years as a head of Atomic
Energy Commission and Alternative Energies Commission in
France, I consider such possibility. But I said I want to do it
only after we have an agreement of an action plan to be sure
that all the ITER members support the recovery plan we needed.
And is why we tried to fix, okay, the organization.
We decide on--about effective decision process. We set up
Executive Project Board. We gathered together project team in
such a way we have an integrated, okay, way to proceed with
domestic agencies, seven domestic agencies, which have to
provide nearly 90 percent of the value of the project. And I am
very pleased to say that we have made very important progress
in this field.
The second important point was to freeze the design. When
you are to build the machine now, you need to have really a
full, okay, finalization of the design. And as you see on the
vacuum vessel sector, nine of them are like this. There is
many, many piece to assemble. So if you have no finalization of
the design, it will delay the delivery. Now on the most
important for me is ITER Organization as a design responsible
and as the owner of the project must not be a limiting step on
any progress for the project.
Also, we develop a large, okay, project culture, nuclear
recognition of--it is a statement we have to do, and I am
pleased to see that the whole staff now is moving on in this
direction. But may be the most important for me is to have a
schedule. And when I come in, I discover that, okay, many
people don't feel that the schedule wasn't right. And it's why
we tried to fix it. I am pleased to say that we have made it
okay as of last November. The ITER council agrees on the first
years and we set up some milestones.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
And so you see some of the milestones, and I don't want to
depict it in detail, but really it's impressive how large the
progress has been made once we free the energy of the suppliers
and have a clear plan.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
Some other milestones, as you see.
Next.
[Slide.]
Okay. The most important was for the ITER members to have
an assessment of our proposal as a schedule, and is why, we
have an independent review panel. And I'm very pleased to say
that on time the panel has delivered its report. On last
Friday, April 15, we've, as you see, quite a positive
assessment on the way we are proceeding.
Next slide.
[Slide.]
Okay. And now we expect that on the basis of this report
that we will be able to have a final decision, okay, on 27th of
April I expect that the ITER council extraordinary meeting will
be able to examine the finding of those independent report and
give full guidance on the next steps. And on the next two ITER
Council, we will have approval of the baseline in such a way we
can move on to First Plasma first and after to DT, deuterium-
tritium commissioning.
Next slide.
[Slide.]
Now, okay, why is the U.S. and the many ITER members has to
stay in in this larger project is because I do believe it's
worth for them to share their capacity. We've limited
investment, nine percent, while it would be a 100 percent
return due to the full sharing of intellectual property and
operational know-how.
Next slide.
[Slide.]
As you know, the United States is largely contributing.
with many national labs been involved in. And you imagine that
if the U.S. alone or any other ITER members has to contribute
all together, it will take much more time.
Next steps, okay.
[Slide.]
Not only we are developing technology for fusion but for
many other cutting-edge technologies and superconducting
materials under final distribution and all these things.
Next.
[Slide.]
you see here a map which show that many States in the U.S.
is involved in the industrialization of this project. Nearly
$800 million has been already awarded to the industry. Eighty
percent are spent fully in the United States of taxpayer money
from the United States and even more, all the partners are
requesting the U.S. industry to deliver.
Next.
[Slide.]
Here is a full list of all the potential suppliers in the,
okay, last time.
Next. Next. Okay.
[Slide.]
And we do believe it's important that it is agreed to
global sense of urgency about the importance of fusion as you
depict because whatever we do, we need to provide more energy
due to the increase in population and also the increase in the
level of livestyle now.
Next.
[Slide.]
Addressing also some environmental concerns, and you see we
depict some possibility. And there is not a silver bullet. We
have to make some innovation in order to be able to, okay,
fulfill the expectation of energy supply. And there's big
players are not only the United States but also some others,
and we have not able to move on. It will be difficult. And I'm
very pleased to tell you that last weeks I was in China, and
China is now pushing very hard in order to be able to deliver.
Last slide, I do believe.
[Slide.]
Fusion is really making the case, as you mentioned, clean,
safe, abundant, and economic energy potential.
And last slide.
[Slide.]
Just to show you that we are now moving on, okay, with this
picture. And if you agree, we could have this video just
showing you, okay, how it is now in the last few days on the
working site.
Thank you for your attention, and I'm ready to listen to
any of your question.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bigot follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Dr. Bigot.
And at this time I recognize Dr. Prager for five minutes to
present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STEWART PRAGER, DIRECTOR,
PRINCETON PLASMA PHYSICS LABORATORY
Dr. Prager. Well, thank you very much for your opening
comments--I appreciate them greatly--and also for the
opportunity to speak to you today.
I direct the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, PPPL,
which is a national laboratory, a DOE national laboratory
managed by Princeton University. I've been asked to describe
PPPL, its activities and opportunities; and ITER, its
importance in relation to the U.S. research program.
PPPL employs a staff of 500. It has the dual mission to
develop fusion energy and to advance fundamental plasma science
with its many applications. The core of a fusion reactor is a
very hot plasma, a gas of electrically charged particles such
as a flame or a star. Research at PPPL concentrates on ideas
that are innovative, unique, and at the world forefront, key
criteria for all U.S. fusion research.
Fusion energy research in Asia and Europe is escalating.
For the U.S. to contribute competitively in the face of larger
investments elsewhere, we must focus on activities with
breakthrough potential. Research at PPPL aims for innovation in
four major areas: the development of a fusion concept that
might lead to a fusion pilot plant as a next step for U.S.
fusion, the challenge of how one surrounds a 100-million-degree
plasma by a resilient material, the use of large-scale
computing for new insights into fusion systems, and physics
research that is key to the success of ITER.
We're currently at a propitious moment at PPPL. We have
recently upgraded our major facility and just begun operation
of this new experiment, the National Spherical Torus
Experiment-Upgrade, NSTX-U. It is a DOE-user facility with 350
researchers from 60 institutions. The experiment cuts across
all of the four topics just mentioned. It is a design that
could lead to a reduced-size fusion pilot plant, a facility
that would demonstrate net electricity production from fusion.
NSTX will tell us whether this exciting step is possible. To do
so it will push the frontier of our understanding of fusion
plasmas.
We are also developing a novel solution to the challenge of
the material that faces the hot plasma. Most of the world is
investigating solid metals. A complementary approach is to
surround the plasma by a liquid metal. Liquids are not damaged
by the hot plasma. This offers a breakthrough solution to a
major challenge. Will it work? We aim to find out through
research that combines plasma physics with material science.
Fusion today is being transformed by supercomputing. We can
now solve the equations that describe fusion plasmas as never
before. PPPL has developed complex computer codes that are
generating innovations in fusion systems. All these activities
yield key understanding to help guide the future of ITER.
Looking to the future, opportunities abound for new world-
leading major initiatives in the United States and the PPPL.
PPPL is an underutilized resource for the Nation. The physical
infrastructure includes capabilities that are unexploited, but
more importantly, the staff of PPPL and U.S. fusion labs in
general has broad world-class expertise and ideas that are not
being tapped fully. We can do much more.
I will mention three exciting paths for PPPL and the United
States. First, if experimental results prove favorable over the
next decade, the United States could possibly move to
preparations for a fusion pilot plant, a transformational step.
Second, with the revolutionary advance in computing power,
we are now optimizing the fusion system in ways that were
nearly inconceivable 20 years ago. With significant reactor
advantages, PPPL aspires to experimentally test such modern
designs.
Third, if current research and liquid materials proves
favorable, we could move to a definitive integrated test of
that concept.
And PPPL aims, as the national lab for fusion, to
coordinate the U.S. research team on ITER following a model we
are developing for a U.S. team that's collaborating on a major
facility in Germany.
This brings me to the importance of ITER. ITER will be the
first experiment to demonstrate and study a burning plasma, a
fusion plasma that is self-sustaining, kept hot by the energy
from fusion. A burning plasma is an essential gateway to
commercial fusion. ITER is the path to this crucial goal.
ITER will also test key technologies and generate 500
million watts of thermal fusion power. ITER will be a landmark
experiment in science and energy of the 21st century. It will
be the focus of the world fusion program, complemented by
strong domestic research in each participating nature--nation.
It is imperative that the United States maintain active
participation in ITER and a strong domestic research program.
These two components are strongly intertwined. Without a strong
domestic program, we will not be able to extract information
from ITER, and a domestic program is needed to solve the
remaining challenges that ITER is not designed to solve.
The U.S. fusion program consists of broad research at
universities and national laboratories and three major tokamak
facilities. The three major facilities are General Atomics,
MIT, and Princeton, form a triad of complementary capabilities
that have made seminal contributions. The Oak Ridge, Livermore,
Los Alamos, and other national labs also make key
contributions.
The university research community in the United States
provides foundational and innovative contributions. Research at
universities spans the full range of fusion challenges carried
out through experiments on campus and through participation at
user facilities. There's a very strong need to reinvigorate
U.S. university research and in fusion energy, which has
suffered losses in recent years.
The opportunities for the United States to accelerate the
pace to fusion energy are enormous. This would strongly benefit
the United States as well as the world.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide an
opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Prager follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Dr. Prager.
I now recognize Dr. Hsu for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. SCOTT HSU, SCIENTIST,
PHYSICS DIVISION,
LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. Hsu. Chairman Weber, Ranking Member Grayson, Members of
the Committee, thank you for your opening remarks, and also
thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I thank the
Committee for its longstanding support of fusion energy and
plasma physics research in this country.
I have been asked to describe the status of DOE support for
innovative fusion energy concept development and to provide
recommendations. I am pleased that the committee is considering
these topics.
I also ask that my written testimony be entered into the
record.
Chairman Weber. Without objection.
Dr. Hsu. My name is Scott Hsu. I was trained in plasma
physics at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and I am
now a fusion research scientist at Los Alamos National
Laboratory. As you know, Los Alamos had its storied beginnings
in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Today, Los Alamos
is focused on national security science, which includes our
nation's energy security. In controlled fusion research, Los
Alamos historically focused on many non-tokamak approaches, and
thus, it is perhaps fitting that I appear before you today to
discuss innovative fusion energy concept development.
The first point is that there are many credible approaches
to fusion energy other than our two leading approaches, which
are the tokamak such as ITER and inertial confinement fusion
such as the National Ignition Facility. You may refer to figure
1 on my written testimony.
Many in the fusion community refer to the other approaches
collectively as alternative or innovative concepts. These are
specifically what I am discussing here today.
The main reason many of us are motivated to pursue
innovative approaches is that they hold the potential for a
smaller fusion reactor with less engineering complexity. Some
of them could potentially cost much less to develop in a
shorter time, perhaps in time to penetrate midcentury
electricity generation markets. But these concepts are less
mature, and more research is needed to tell us whether their
performance can be improved to the point of enabling a power
reactor.
The second point is that lowering the cost of fusion energy
development is itself a worthwhile goal. The reason is that the
stages of development of our mainline fusion programs are very
costly, too costly for private investors and companies to play
a significant role.
One potential way to lower the cost of fusion energy
development is to strategically pursue a number of the most
promising innovative fusion concepts that are inherently much
lower cost than the tokamak. If federal support reduces early-
stage risk for promising lower-cost innovative fusion energy
concepts, then more companies such as Tri Alpha Energy or
General Fusion may step into pursue fusion energy development.
The third point is that present DOE support of innovative
fusion concept development is unhealthy with no new federal
funding opportunities. As recently as 2010, DOE provided
approximately $42 million per year to support innovative
concept development. Today, the only such support is in the
recently initiated ARPA-E ALPHA program, which is $30 million
over three years, and is focused on a particular class of
fusion approaches called magneto-inertial fusion due to its
inherently low cost. This was also referred to as magnetized
target fusion. You may refer to figure 2 of my written
testimony.
So let me close with three primary recommendations. First,
Congress and DOE should reassess innovative fusion energy
concept development, which should be pursued in addition to our
present fusion energy program elements, which Dr. Prager
described very eloquently. DOE should consider implementing a
new energy-oriented innovative concepts program with
appropriate metrics to encourage lower cost and timely
development of economically competitive fusion power. Progress
is possible for a modest fraction of the overall fusion budget.
Secondly, any new program should enable and promote
advances with regard to both the plasma physics challenges and
the criteria for a practical fusion power reactor.
Finally, a federal funding bridge should exist for the
entire innovative concepts development path from early-stage
research to a logical handoff to private development. And this
is depicted in figure 3 of my written testimony.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy
to take questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hsu follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Weber. Thank you, Dr. Hsu. And, Dr. Bigot, when
you earlier had your comments about the video, I thought you
were offering that--to send that to our office, but we've got
time to watch that video now if that's what you'd like to do.
Let's play that video.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. Thank you.
Chairman Weber. You bet you.
[Video shown.]
Chairman Weber. Thank you, Dr. Bigot. I now recognize
myself for five minutes.
Dr. Prager, I think you said that the fusion power may
become actually a--you may have a pilot plant in ten years in
your testimony? Elaborate on that.
Dr. Prager. So one grand goal of fusion on a step along the
way is to build an energy-producing plant.
Chairman Weber. Right.
Dr. Prager. ITER will produce energy but it won't make--
it's not intended to make net electricity. So there is a goal
to do that, to demonstrate that you can make net electricity,
produce more electricity than you can consume.
So in experiments at Princeton the design that we're
studying at NSTX-U, if successful, can offer the possibility of
doing that at a somewhat smaller size, not radically smaller
but somewhat smaller scale than the conventional tokamak
approach.
Chairman Weber. Would that be on site where you are now?
Dr. Prager. No. A--such a facility would involve tritium
handling, which would not best be done in Princeton, New
Jersey.
Chairman Weber. Okay. Well----
Dr. Prager. In ten years we could begin the design and
construction of such a facility, and there are--this is--there
are other ideas, for example, to use advances in magnets,
current magnet technology also to seek reduced size pilot
plants. So this is one aspiration for the future.
Chairman Weber. Well, that--I mean, you're putting it--to
the gentleman from Florida's question about we don't do this in
our lifetime, you're putting a ten-year time frame on it,
which, whether or not it's realistic--but that is a goal for us
to shoot at and I'm encouraged to hear that.
Dr. Prager. Yes. But just let me clarify, that's not ten
years to a commercial reactor.
Chairman Weber. No, I get it.
Dr. Prager. So let me clear----
Chairman Weber. No, I get that.
Dr. Prager. Okay. If it's ten years where we would begin
the----
Chairman Weber. Right.
Dr. Prager. --design and construction of a pilot plant----
Chairman Weber. I'm just hoping my friend from Florida will
still be with us----
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Chairman Weber. --in ten years.
Dr. Prager. I hope so, too.
Chairman Weber. Yes. You bet. So that--I was glad to hear
that.
And, Dr. Prager, would you support Department of Energy's
development of high-performance computational tools that would
be accessible to the researchers in the private sector,
academia, and at the national labs to be useful to the fusion
community? Do you think that would help shorten that time frame
to where we could develop that commercial energy power plant?
Dr. Prager. Absolutely, yes. You know, there's been
revolutionary advances in supercomputers that's revolutionizing
all of modern science, fusion no less than any other. So with
the supercomputing capabilities we can design concepts and test
them on the computer and advance them in ways that we couldn't
possibly do before. And there are new ideas on the table
because of that.
It's also, I might say, critical for us in terms of
interpreting ITER results. We need these advanced computation
to understand as best as we can how ITER will behaved. So this
is revolutionary for fusion.
Chairman Weber. Dr. Hsu, does that help you?
Dr. Hsu. Absolutely, yes. I should also add that for
smaller projects such as Innovative Concepts, the resources
generally are tough to come by to make use of our computational
capabilities. So any assistance on that front would be
tremendously useful for innovative concept development. Also in
the inertial fusion side, access to some of the codes can be
difficult for people not at the national labs, so----
Chairman Weber. Okay.
Dr. Hsu. --making codes more generally available would help
fusion energy development.
Chairman Weber. You're working on magnetized target fusion?
Dr. Hsu. Yes, that's correct.
Chairman Weber. That's part of this and that would help you
in that endeavor?
Dr. Hsu. Yes.
Chairman Weber. Okay. Very good.
And, Dr. Bigot, I'm going to come back to you. Thank you,
by the way, for your success--early success as Director General
in setting a time frame and a guideline. We really appreciate
your efforts in that manner.
The fact that you've had success should instill confidence,
but how can we help you--what needs to be done to increase the
confidence in ITER that ITER will be on--will continue on that
steady pace to realize its goals? What are your plans to make
sure that you continue that pace?
Dr. Bigot. It's clear that it's a long-term commitment for
all the seven ITER members, and I do believe that the best
would be for the ITER members to have referral and open
discussion in such a way that any proposal we could make could
be fully examined and supported. And it's why it is so
important that the seven members feel fully committed to
support what we call the "best technically achievable schedule"
in such a way that we have all the milestones--we have now
clearly a position on this road. We have the full support.
I really appreciate that you would give us the opportunity
to make more largely--warn us, share among all the ITER members
about the importance of continuous support.
Chairman Weber. Well, thank you for saying that. And we
want you to view this committee as a resource because we want
to be a source of encouragement and resource for you so that
anything we can do to keep this project moving forward, we want
to be able to be helped in.
I'm over my time. So thank you again for being here and
your testimony.
And the Chair is going to recognize Alan Grayson.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you.
Dr. Bigot, it's been ten years already since the major
governments of the world signed off on the ITER project. We now
have 11 years to go before we start to do the major experiments
involved, and there isn't even a plan to actually generate net
electricity from ITER. That's not its design or its purpose.
Dr. Prager, you're talking about an alternative smaller-
scale approach where we would begin construction ten years from
now. Let's say hypothetically that mankind wakes up tomorrow
morning and decides that we don't want to wait 10 or 11 years
until we do the experiments or the construction, but we want a
much quicker result that can lead to electricity generation net
from fusion projects in a shorter time frame. What should we
do? Dr. Hsu?
Dr. Hsu. I think we need to pursue many avenues at this
point because we don't know the answer right now. ITER is the
most mature--ITER is the most mature method, and I believe that
is why we're pursuing and need to pursue it, but we should
consider all our known options at this point.
Mr. Grayson. Well, consider, what do you mean by that?
Pursue, you used that word also. What do you mean by that? What
should we do?
Dr. Hsu. We should look at our other options alongside our
maybe--you know, our most mature option.
Mr. Grayson. Do you want to enumerate some?
Dr. Prager. Well, so some of the examples I discuss in my
written testimony and on the figure 1 of my written testimony,
DOE has supported the development of those concepts in the
past. There is room to continue advancing some of those
concepts, and some of those concepts, as I mentioned earlier,
are attractive because they have less engineering complexity.
But they--but I caution, they are at a less-mature state right
now, so it's harder to provide a reliable path forward. We need
to do the research to decide whether the performance is
acceptable.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Prager, if we don't want to wait 10 or 11
years simply to conduct more experiments or new construction
but we actually want to see some positive result that benefits
mankind in a shorter time frame, what should we do?
Dr. Prager. Well, we're resource-limited right now. I think
if the United States wanted to commit more aggressively to
fusion, there's lots that we can do. We can lay plans now for
in the United States to build an energy-producing facility.
Whether it's a pilot plant or something of reduced ambition,
the scientific immunity would have to debate, but we can move
forward on that. We could move forward on ideas that offer
perhaps more attractive route or solve some of the problems
that are confronting us.
I mentioned the computer is able to design machines we
couldn't design before. There are designed on the table that
the United States should be building that would have very
attractive features. I think there is no one idea that's a
magic bullet that will deliver commercial fusion power in 10
years.
Mr. Grayson. Okay.
Dr. Prager. I don't think that's going to happen. But we
can greatly accelerate the pace, and no question, fusion can be
developed in a timescale to have a huge impact on how we
produce energy in the mid-part of this century.
Mr. Grayson. All right.
Dr. Prager. I do agree with Dr. Hsu's testimony. I think
that we should be supporting ideas in fusion that span from the
mainstream and there's a continuous spectrum all out to ideas
that are very, very primitive at this time. But I agree with
Dr. Hsu that we should have metrics and a systematic way to
judge their progress and what should move forward and what
shouldn't be.
Mr. Grayson. You say there are designs on the table that
the United States should be building. What are they?
Dr. Prager. So here you'll get different answers. Let me
just preface it. You'll get different answers from different
fusion scientists because there's a plethora of ideas and
everybody has their favorite. So with that preface I'll tell
you one of my favorites, okay? There are designs now that use
magnets that look highly, highly asymmetric. If you look at
how--the magnet structure, it's not nice, circular magnets.
It's because we can design--we can optimize the shape of the
magnetic bottle so that--to make the best physics performance
we can possibly get.
So there are designs that go into the brand name of
stellarators. They're studied in Germany and Japan, but there
are unique U.S. designs that automatically run continuously for
months on end and are extremely stable and well controlled. And
that's one example, I think, of a modern design that we should
be building. And there are others.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Bigot?
Dr. Bigot. You know, I want to be very clear. We have not
to oversell, okay, the schedule. For example, I just want to
let you know that for many factorings a big vacuum vessel
sectors. There are nine that I mentioned there. We know we
could not do it before three years and eight months, okay? It
takes time if we want to be able to really deliver.
The ITER project now want to demonstrate clearly that we
will have, okay, massive production, a sustainable production,
and it is leading-edge, okay, technologies and it takes time,
okay. It's a nuclear facility. We need to absolutely work on
quality and safety, and for me, I'm very supportive of the
alternative, okay, development, which could be brought in
because I do believe it will be worth once we have as ITER
demonstration to integrate some of these things. But as long as
we have not seen the real breakthrough with, okay, the yield of
factor of ten and when compared with the energy it is consuming
in order to heat the plasma it will be difficult to
accommodate.
Again, we have to think about, for example, for developing
the superconducting coils now, it takes nearly, okay, 30 years,
okay, on all the best expert worldwide in national labs in
order to secure an industry production, okay. So from my point
of view we are not to raise too much expectation.
The most important for me is to keep now on schedule. We
have a clear schedule, okay. It will take, as you say, okay,
ten, eleven years to have the first plasma done, and I do
believe it will be the best demonstration of the availability
of this technology to be able to afford according to the best
schedule we have.
Mr. Grayson. I yield back.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentleman and now recognize Mr.
Knight from California for five minutes.
Mr. Knight. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
So I'm just going to go down the kind of time frame here
and who's involved. We have seven members involved, and we have
about a 30-year process of where we started on this and now
we're talking about another--maybe a ten-year process before we
get to a--kind of a working model for lack of a better term
here.
In every situation when we talk about a long-term project,
we're always talking about cost, we're always talking about
who's involved and maybe if we need to get more money, then we
have to look at those members, or has anyone talked about
bringing in other countries, other members into this agreement?
Yes, sir.
Dr. Bigot. Yes. Clearly, I'm pleased to see that in the
world many countries are looking to fusion, as you do yourself,
and I'm very pleased to see some new companies starting in
order to demonstrate if there is some innovation. And I'm clear
to you that some country now are questioning us as to whether
we could accept if they could join us as a new ITER member. So
very soon I will discuss with some of these countries in order
to see if they could fulfill the regulation and the rules to
join the ITER.
Mr. Knight. Okay.
Dr. Bigot. And I will let you know as soon as, okay, we
will be there. It could help us because, as you know, there is
over-cost and so if these people bring in and are decided to be
really a member, it will reduce the difficulty to find, okay,
the financial request we are now facing.
Mr. Knight. Okay. Very good. And I'm to understand that the
ITER project is the closest project in this form of technology
anywhere in the world, is that correct?
Dr. Bigot. According to me, yes. We have been working for
so long and all----
Mr. Knight. You're my expert.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. And we are--yes. And we are now benefiting
of all the experience. You know, when the project start, it was
quite difficult challenge to fix everything, but now after the
ten years, I do believe if we have a proper management, we will
be able to deliver on time.
Mr. Knight. Okay. And my last question is a question I
always put to my son is that do you think we're smart enough to
do some of the things today? And the answer is always we may or
may not be smart enough to do some of these things. The fact of
the matter is for the supercomputing that is happening today,
we are way smarter today than we might have been ten years ago
with the advancements in computers, with the advancements that
we have done over the last ten years to get us to where we are.
So in ten years from now, hopefully, we have this model,
hopefully, we are on schedule and we are hitting all the points
that we're supposed to for this project. But over those ten
years, computers are going to be infinitely better at what they
do, compared to today. We are going to know an awful lot more
in ten years than we know today.
So with all of that being said, I hear from all three of
the panelists that it is very hopeful and possible that we will
be there in ten years to have this project up and running. And
I am getting that from all three of my panelists, is that
correct?
Dr. Bigot. Yes. According to me, you are correct. It was
really very well point out and underlined that computing
facility is very, very important asset for the developing of
these technologies.
As you know now, within the ITER we have what we call a
broader approach. With Japan, for example, we have a computer
specially dedicated to the modeling of the plasma and all of
the, okay, operation and factors.
But I would say that now the ITER project is a really
challenging engineering, okay, goal and is why it's bringing us
so much to have this computing capability. And if you come
onsite, you will see we have what we call a virtual room where
all the engineers day after day are able to see how this piece
will be fully assembled, how we can maintain them, how we could
take advantage of the optimization of the process. So computing
for me is really something which could help a lot in the
future.
Mr. Knight. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And I think we
were just invited to southern France.
Chairman Weber. All right. Well, when this hearing is
concluded, we'll all get--go to the airport.
I appreciate the gentleman yielding back, and the
gentlelady from Massachusetts is recognized.
Ms. Clark. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the
panelists for being here. And I understand that burning plasma
science is just one of the areas that we have to address if we
really want to deliver on fusion's promise of clean--as a clean
energy source in a meaningful timescale as we look at climate
change and the effects that it is having.
What--this is really a follow-up on Representative
Grayson's question, but what does the United States have to do
to establish leadership and accelerate the progress in plasma
phasing materials research or in simulation and modeling of
plasmas? For anyone.
Dr. Bigot. I could start. For me from my point of view as
ITER, as everybody knows in the world, the United States has
the most advanced, okay, in science and technology industry. So
the best we could expect is to train excellent engineers,
excellent scientists, and invite them to join the effort
because the staff will be the best asset to move forward more
rapidly.
And so for me it's very important that we have a clear
long-term vision, okay, a real roadmap to deliver in such a way
we built trust for the new generation to be involved in these
works. As we discussed here, it's a few years ahead of us when
we will be able to operate a facility, and the best is to have
new generation to be involved in this field according to my
views.
Ms. Clark. Thank you.
Dr. Prager. So in terms of your two questions on
computation, I think we have the knowhow, we know what to do,
we're building the codes, and we just need to be part of
actually the presidential initiative in exascale computation.
If fusion can partake in that, we can very directly move ahead
in computation. That's--we're just--we're ready to go. And it's
an area where a relatively modest investment can keep the
United States on the leading edge in fusion computation.
You asked specifically about plasma-facing materials. Well,
within the last year the U.S. fusion community got together and
did some planning in that and came up with four possible next
steps. They include building an experiment that's specifically
designed to shoot a plasma into a material to develop material
science. It includes a robust program in developing liquid
metals as a plasma-facing component. It includes ideas to build
a new but medium-sized tokamak that's designed specifically to
learn how to exhaust the heat in a way that the material
survives. And it also includes full utilization of the current
facilities that are studying this. So the community did come
together and lay out some near-term affordable opportunities in
that area.
Ms. Clark. Great. Thank you.
Do you have anything to offer, Dr. Hsu?
Dr. Hsu. Yes, I like to say that I think to follow on Dr.
Bigot's point about bringing young--bright young people into
the field especially, there are things we can do. One of the
things that I wrote about, about the excitement out some of the
innovative concept work is that because it offers a tantalizing
possibility of a faster development path, that that could help
with exciting, you know, the new generation of fusion
scientists.
The other thing is the advanced computational abilities you
spoke about could really help the innovative concept aspect of
the program because not as much has been applied to innovative
concept research with our latest and best computational
capabilities.
Ms. Clark. So if I understood you correctly in your
testimony, you were talking about--I think you said that for
the private sector a lot of these innovative technologies are
too expensive to really have a meaningful investment. If we are
not finding that funding in the United States, are there
international competitors who are looking to fund this type of
innovation?
Mr. HSU. I believe there is. I know that General Fusion,
the Canadian company, has obtained funding from the Malaysian
Government's sovereign fund. I've read that Tri Alpha Energy
has received funding from a private equity vehicle created by
the Russian Government. We know that China is building many if
not most of the devices I showed in my figure 1, and I believe
China is also pursuing magneto-inertial fusion, which is the
focus of the Alpha ARPA-E program. So I--for some of these
things international sources may become the main option.
Ms. Clark. Thank you. I see I'm out of time. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentlelady, and Mr. Hultgren
from Illinois is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all so much
for being here. This is an important discussion for us to be
having. Fusion energy certainly is a very important research
area that has the potential to completely transform our energy
sector. It also is a massive undertaking that is emblematic of
the internationalization of major research facilities. Our
scientific communities have to work together because we can no
longer just go it alone and expect to get anything done.
Dr. Bigot, I wonder if I could address my first question to
you. First, I want to say that I really appreciate the work
that you're doing, and from all that I've heard, the ITER
project seems to be in a much better place than it has been in
the past, and I think much of that is because of your
leadership.
One question I'd like to ask you, and I hope you can be
candid so that we can help to make America a better partner, I
wanted to ask what the biggest hurdles that you face or that
others face working with the United States. What are the first
questions you ask yourself when we say that we're going to
deliver on a project that is five or ten or fifteen years down
the road?
Dr. Bigot. As you know, this project is so large that just
one single country cannot afford it. You have to think about
that we are building huge magnetic cages. The size of it is 20
meters, I would say, with a precision which is millimetric. So
if we just considering one country, whatever powerful it could
be, it will be too long to clearly demonstrate.
So for me it's very important again, as I stress the point,
that the United States be committed on the long-term and could
contribute--they contribute with their staff, as I mentioned.
They could contribute also with many other technologies, okay.
The project--the ITER project, as any others, okay, fusion
project, request a lot of different technology, cryogenics,
electro techniques, materials, and all these things. And so all
these part could be gathered, okay, and I expect, as it was
told by your Dr. Prager and Dr. Hsu, that there is strong
support for all these basic research which could contribute to
accelerate the proper delivery of the fusion technology in the
world in the very next two decades really.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you. I hope that--I do see how
important this partnership is, and I hope we can remain a
reliable partner. That's something that we've got to struggle
with and make sure that especially the funding side of things,
that we are reliable there.
Dr. Prager, I wanted to talk briefly with you. First of
all, it's good to see you again and I look forward to seeing
you later with the Lab Day that's going on over on the Senate
side this afternoon. But the privilege I have of representing
Fermilab, I see a lot of similarities between our two labs
being single-purpose, and I'll make sure that any measure of
success our labs use, it takes into account the differences
between these labs, and also our broader multipurpose labs like
Argonne and some others.
When we do science, the science itself should always be the
driver of the work we pursue, but it's always good for us to
know the other side-benefits and application from our research.
I wonder what other applications does your research have that
can benefit the nation?
Dr. Prager. Thank you. And I do want to thank you for your
broad support of the whole national laboratory complex, which
is invaluable to us.
Mr. Hultgren. Thanks.
Dr. Prager. The applications of fusion energy science go
far and broad. And there are two classes of applications. One
is to other areas of science, and the other one is applications
to society and industry in general. In science we only have to
know that essentially all of the visible universe is made up of
plasma. So if you want to understand how stars are formed, how
black holes work, why solar flares occur, if you want to
understand the space weather and the Earth's environment,
that's largely a problem in plasma physics. And the synergy
between fusion science and what we call plasma astrophysics is
enormous. So the effect on astronomy is enormous.
In regard to your--one of your interest areas of Fermilab,
there are plasma ideas to build new accelerators where you can
accelerate particles much more quickly to high energy over much
shorter distances than the present accelerator technology, and
this is a very exciting application of plasma physics to
particle physics, which is the focus of Fermilab.
In industry, plasmas have a nice property. They're kind of
people-sized and they're pretty hot and you can use them to
interact with materials in revolutionary ways. So plasmas are
used to make semiconductor chips and have in part fueled
Moore's Law. Plasmas are used to make new types of
nanostructures that are revolutionizing various types of
industry. Plasmas are used to burn up waste. There's a new area
of plasma medicine where plasmas interact with biological
systems. You can use plasmas to heal wounds and plasmas can
affect the chemical reactions in biological systems. There are
plasma rocket thrusters that are in use today. You can--instead
of having a chemical rocket, you can shoot a plasma out of a
nozzle and the rocket moves forward. So you can have rockets
that are much more fuel efficient. So there's a remarkably
broad array of both fundamental science and industrial
applications of plasmas.
Mr. Hultgren. That's great. It sounds exciting and I'm
looking forward to everything that comes out of this.
Thank you all again. My time is expired. I yield back,
Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentleman. And, Mr. Lipinski, I
think you're up.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing. It's very important.
As I'm sure everyone has talked about the--how critical it
could be to--you know, producing energy in so many areas if we
can figure this out.
I visited the NIF--I visited NIF at Lawrence Livermore a
few years ago, but I'm going to leave that to Ms. Lofgren to
talk a little bit more about that. I'm sure she has some
questions and comments about that. But I want to look at what
we've been doing over the past few years looking at promising
alternative approaches to achieving a viable fusion reactor.
They have emerged from some small and midsize startups, as well
as academia and our national labs.
And Dr. Hsu, you know well ARPA-E recently established a
three-year program to further explore the potential for some of
these concepts, particularly on an approach called magnetized
target fusion. But like all ARPA-E initiatives, this program is
temporary. It does not cover the full range of emerging
alternatives that currently receive no federal support.
So I want to ask Dr. Hsu and Dr. Prager, does the Office of
Science's current fusion research program have the flexibility
to shift resources to promising new approaches if they don't
align with the conventional tokamak research pathway? And if
not, what can we do to provide the office with the flexibility?
Dr. Hsu. Thank you for the question. I do not believe the
flexibility current exists--currently exists for alternative
concepts. At present, innovative concept development has no
budget, nor new proposal solicitations from DOE, and I believe
this omission should be addressed.
Mr. Lipinski. Dr. Prager, do you have----
Dr. Prager. I agree with Dr. Hsu. The budget--the fusion
budget is very constrained financially, so there's been a
decision made not to have a defined program to develop and
consider fusion concepts that are different than what we call
the tokamak and stellarator. And I do agree there should be a
program and an opportunity within DOE, and these concepts, as
Dr. Hsu said, should be subject to metrics, strict metrics
moving forward. But I think as a--I would say as a matter of
policy, the fusion program should be able to consider and,
where meritorious, fund a variety of approaches to fusion.
Mr. Lipinski. All right. Thank you. I have to run off to a
markup, so I yield back. Thanks.
Chairman Weber. The gentleman yields back.
And Mr. Rohrabacher from California, you are recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'd just like to get some numbers straight here. So over
the last ten years we have spent $900 million on this project,
is that right?
Dr. Bigot. Globally, globally, yes, with the seven members,
yes. It is----
Mr. Rohrabacher. No, 700--how much has the United States
spent on it?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. Right now, I do believe it's below two
billion, but it is more to the U.S. ITER project office to
speak about because myself, as the IO, have not the precise
number because a different domestic agency has to provide in-
kind, and I've not precise knowledge----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, how much money--we have spent how
much money over the last ten years, the United States?
Dr. Prager. So I think it is--I don't have the exact
number, but it is a good fraction of one billion dollars.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So about----
Dr. Prager. It's been typically funded in the range of $100
million a year----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Dr. Prager. --you know, building up to where it is now----
Mr. Rohrabacher. So----
Dr. Prager. --so it's a fraction of one billion dollars.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So around about $900 million is----
Dr. Prager. In that range, yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. And how much have our partners spent
on this project?
Dr. Prager. Maybe Dr. Bigot can give the best estimate.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. It's quite difficult to give you a precise
answer again as I explained to you because seven member has to
bring, okay, their in-kind contribution, okay, each member,
China, Russia, India, and so--and so the labor cost, for
example, is not exactly comparable, okay. So again, I have no
consolidation of the global cost which has already been spent.
I can say clearly what has been spent, for example, in the ITER
organization, where we are on the order of 250, 300 million, no
more, okay, one billion per year on the last year, so this is
below three billion, which has been spent already.
My expectation now, if we have some equivalency with what
we call the European currency-because the European currency so
far is used for measurement of the cost-altogether it will be
spending including, commitments, on the order of twelve
million--of twelve billion.
Mr. Rohrabacher. No, no, how much have they already spent
is the question.
Dr. Bigot. Spent is no more than $7 billion according to my
view.
Mr. Rohrabacher. They have already spent seven billion?
Dr. Bigot. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So we've spent $900 million, and
they've spent seven billion on the project already, is that
correct?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. I don't believe in the U.S. you have spent
9 billion, okay----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Nine hundred million.
Dr. Bigot. Oh, 900, okay, yes, okay. Sorry, I miss the
point. Yes, I agree with you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. So we've spent a grand total of
perhaps--six billion on this project already has been spent, is
that correct?
Dr. Bigot. Yes, it is of this order. As I explained to you,
we've----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Six, seven billion dollars. All right. And
we've spent nine billion. And we would expect to spend four-six
billion more of our money in the next ten years, is that
correct?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. As you know, we have made, okay, this best
achievable schedule. We've come with some cost estimates, and
the cost estimates, for the first plasma from the point of view
of the ITER, okay, the central organization is on the order of
four billion more.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We would be spending four billion?
Dr. Bigot. Yes. And so----
Mr. Rohrabacher. And how much----
Dr. Bigot. Because----
Mr. Rohrabacher. And how much would our--how much are our
allies in this project expected to spend----
Dr. Bigot. Okay.
Mr. Rohrabacher. --more?
Dr. Bigot. Altogether it is an increase of four billion.
And again, I don't speak about the in-kind which is, okay, the
responsibility of the different ITER members. So----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Dr. Bigot. --altogether my expectation that the cost for
this project ready for operation will be of the order of 18
billion of euro. I speak in euro.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. The----
Dr. Bigot. Okay.
Mr. Rohrabacher. How much--so of the 18 billion, we will be
spending four to six billion, and they will be spending the
rest, is that right?
Dr. Bigot. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. That's what I'm looking for
there. And this--we would--it's going to be ten years before we
actually will be determining whether or not the project has
been successful?
Dr. Bigot. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. And so the total price of what
we're ending up talking about is what? I'm trying to add up the
figures here. What, twenty billion?
Dr. Bigot. Yes, of this order, okay, I do believe you are--
this is the right order.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Twenty billion dollars. And let me just
note that--and what would you--you'd say the chances--after $20
billion, the chances of success and of reaching what
theoretically is possible, what would you say the chances are
of actual success in achieving that?
Dr. Bigot. According to me, the science is quite robust,
taking advantage of all the work which has been done worldwide.
The main challenge now is engineering and industrial----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well----
Dr. Bigot. --and I do believe that, okay, more and more we
are moving on. More and more we are confident that we will
deliver.
Mr. Rohrabacher. The engineering--so it's possible,
however, the engineering couldn't--I mean, for example, I
understand that already there's been great progress made in the
producing the advanced materials that--the actual material
science has grown a long way, and you've achieved the goals--a
lot--many of the goals that are necessary in the materials
area. But that was possible that that may not have happened. I
mean, we actually achieved a goal we didn't know we could
achieve----
Dr. Bigot. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. --and we achieved it. So you're going to
have to lay odds on----
Dr. Bigot. Okay.
Mr. Rohrabacher. --all the engineering and all these things
coming together. What are your odds?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. So the point is the following. As you
know, the ITER project is a research project, and you're asked
to demonstrate the, okay, capacity of materials, of good
process, and all these things, and is why it will be a living
project. In my expectation we have all the capacity of the
scientists and engineers, okay, there is great chance that we
will fulfill.
In any case, I do believe this project could be so
beneficial to the world that it is really worth to try and to
demonstrate.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. Let me----
Dr. Bigot. And again, we spoke----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Let me mention this. There are a lot of
wonderful things that we can do in this world.
Dr. Bigot. I know.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Wonderful things, and----
Dr. Bigot. Including ITER.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. And ITER maybe one of them, but what
we do is we judge each one based on the cost and the chances of
success. And I'm sorry, I've been through a lot of these
hearings, and I still think that the money that we put into
trying to develop fusion--had we put $20 billion in this same
effort into perfecting fission, we'd be a lot--it's a lot
greater chance for improving mankind.
But as we move forward, I wish you success because we want
those dollars not to be wasted.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. When--again, I want to point out that the
United States now has the sharing of nine percent, okay, and
with all the effort made by all the other partners, you have
good chance to have 100 percent, okay, rewarding with all the
knowledge and the, okay, knowledge we bring in.
So, again, as you know, I have been working on energy for
years and years. I do believe that in the world we'll be facing
real challenge when we will see that fossil fuel we rely on
more than 80 percent now will be depleting. We know. It is
obvious. I don't know if it is in ten years or is a century,
but it will be, and if we have no alternative technology in
order to produce massively energy, okay, complementary with the
renewable energy, we will--the world will face real difficulty.
So again, I do believe it is worth to go as far as we can
in order to make full demonstration. Fusion has worked for
years in the sun and stars, as Dr. Prager says, so why very
talented scientists and engineers will not be able to deliver?
My trust is that they will do so, provided that they have good
support.
Chairman Weber. We're going to go ahead and move on.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you.
Chairman Weber. I think the gentleman is yielding back. So
I thank the gentleman, and we're going to move to Mr. Foster of
Illinois.
Mr. Foster. Well, thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman,
for allowing me to sit on this committee hearing.
I guess my first question is, assuming that ITER succeeds
and that sometime around 2025, 2030, would succeed at
everything including DT--the DT program, what are the--going to
be the remaining unsolved problems A) to be able to design a
production which--you know, something that is an energy plant,
you know, what's on the list of things that will be unsolved
problems?
And secondly, what will be needed to understand what the
levelized cost of electricity from a tokamak of those
dimensions might be? You know, those are the two things that
have to succeed to make fusion succeed as--succeed
scientifically and engineering-wise, and it has to succeed
economically. And so what will be the unsolved problems in 2025
or 2030, assuming everything goes nominally? I'm happy to
have--you two can split it.
Dr. Bigot. May I start? Yes. Okay. I do believe that the
main problem which will have--okay, there is two main problem
from my point of view. Once--okay, the ITER will have in
delivery, okay, full demonstration that we could have, okay,
500 megawatt coming out of the 50 megawatt we will put in.
It is materials, okay. When we will have continuous
production of plasma energies, with some energy flux with
neutrons which are as large as 20 megawatt per square meter,
when we know, for example, when many----
Mr. Foster. That's the power density on the diverter or
not----
Dr. Bigot. Yes, on the diverter.
Mr. Foster. Right. Okay. Right.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. So all we could manage is some material
which could be able to sustain such a flux continuously.
And the second, we know if we want to take full advantage
of the investment of industry or tokamak, we've--okay, the
superconducting coils which could last for very long because
there is no real use with, okay, superconducting coils because
there is no energy dissipation, as you know. And so it will be
the remote handling. How could we change some of the piece, for
example, okay, tiles which will be facing the plasma or we
could make all this remote handling properly done in such a way
that, okay, we could take the best investment and have a long
lifetime, okay, expectation for the delivery.
So in order to come to the point you mentioned about the
economy: it is a big investment, but if the operational costs
in the long lifetime of the equipment are very low, it will be
quite economical process.
Mr. Foster. And is that--are there actually designed
studies where you say just, okay, imagine that you're not
making one of ITER but you're making worldwide 100 of them? You
know, how cheap could you imagine making all the
superconducting coils? How cheap could you imagine making all
the different components? You know, you can be optimistic
there, but if you find that the levelized cost of electricity
doesn't look--you know, doesn't look attractive, then you have
to actually step back and maybe reallocate between more
adventurous but potentially cheaper ones and straight ahead
with the current plan.
And so what's the current state of knowledge of what the
economics might be, just assuming everything works technically
here?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. Right now, there are several studies. As
we know, ITER is the first of a kind, okay, and we have a lot
of equipment around, the technology and so on. So the people
mentioned to me very recently that when we will be moving to a
real industrial facility, maybe the cost will be down compared
to the cost of the ITER facility----
Mr. Foster. Oh, unquestionably. And if you tell me you are
optimistic it will be a factor of the--the unit cost will drop
by a factor of five, it's not unthinkable, but then you still
have to do the cost of electricity calculation and see if
you're happy with the result. And that's--I wonder if--those
sort of studies must have been done for different versions of
fusion machines at different levels of accuracy. What's the
current understanding for whether the ITER design point has a
shot? I mean, that's the question I'm trying to get at.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. From my point of view all the studies I
have seen so far we expect that the cost of the electricity
which will come is--from such a facility will be around, okay,
what we call 100 euro--I speak in euro, okay, which will be
100, okay, dollars, okay, per megawatt, as you have now, for
example, with some of the, okay, windmills or solar energy.
Mr. Foster. That's----
Dr. Bigot. So it would be comparable.
Mr. Foster. --13 cents a kilowatt hour, right?
Dr. Bigot. Yes.
Mr. Foster. Yes. Stu, do you have anything?
Dr. Prager. I agree with everything Dr. Bigot said. I think
for challenges, let me list three. I think one in the plasma
science we have to learn how to hold the plasma in steady-state
persistently. ITER will teach us about that but ITER will burn
for about 8 minutes or so, and we need to learn how to have a
burning plasma that lasts for months on end. That is in part a
plasma science challenge, and there's research underway to
accomplish that, number one.
Number two, as Bigot said, there's a whole--the whole issue
of materials research, both the plasma-facing component and the
structural material that has to manage the neutron bombardment,
and that's a set of challenges, and there are ideas how to meet
those challenges.
And third, while ITER is operating, we are working on how
to make the reactor concept even more attractive economically.
So ITER will teach us all about burning plasma science and then
maybe by the time we get that, we'll have evolved beyond simply
duplicating ITER for a reactor. So we can take that burning
plasma science, ideas that have been developed in parallel
maybe have a more highly optimized reactor.
On cost of electricity, over the years there have been--the
best engineering studies that could be done taking the cost of
materials, the cost of assembly and calculating, you know,
capital cost and cost of electricity, they always come out to
be competitive with baseload power generation of today.
However, projecting economics 30 years into the future is
highly theoretical.
We have an interesting data point with ITER, and we do ask
ourselves the question, does the cost to construct ITER, is it
consistent with the engineering calculations of what a reactor
will cost? ITER is not a reactor, first of a kind, and so on.
And at PPPL we had the beginnings of a study to try to
quantify that, try to quantify how much extra cost is in ITER
because it's an experiment, it's the first of a kind,
internationally managed. And so we're in the process of trying
to get financial, if you like, data from the ITER partners so
we can quantitatively answer your question.
Mr. Foster. Well, thank you. And, you know, that's very
important to our--the strategic decisions that we're going to
have to make.
I guess at this point I yield back.
Chairman Weber. Thank--you know, Bill, Yogi Berra said the
problem with predictions is you're dealing with the future.
So the gentleman recognizes the gentleman from Georgia.
Barry, you're up.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Bigot, you mentioned in your testimony that not only is
ITER building a first-of-its-kind reactor but the
organizational structure is first of kind--first of its kind.
If you could go back and restructure the organization, would
you do anything different, and if so, what would it be?
Dr. Bigot. Yes, you're right. It's quite a challenge to
have these 35 different nation with different culture,
different, okay, ways to proceed working altogether. But I do
believe it's a precondition for the ITER to move forward
because, as I said, it's a large investment, okay, large
industrial capacity. If we have not all these partners around
the table, it will be difficult.
If I would start from scratch with return of experience we
have, I do believe that it would have been much better if what
we propose in the action plan was accepted from the very
beginning, which mean the DG--the Director General has full,
okay, power to take any technical decision which is needed for
the project even though the partners are making in-kind
contribution, which is good because it allows the industry to
develop, okay, to, okay, foster innovation in many fields.
I do believe the key point is the decision-making process.
In the beginning it was not clear enough that it is an
industrial project, and we have to empower the Director General
with all, okay, the support and agreement of the ITER council
members that he has capacity to decide. And I'm very pleased
that I was able to convince the seven ITER members, when I
elaborated and developed this action plan that they understood
that, and they really support me during the past 12 month on
this matter.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Dr. Prager, did you want to--I didn't
know if you were--you had something to add.
Dr. Prager. Well, I don't know. I mean, Bigot--Dr. Bigot is
the expert on that. I think the international arrangement has
been well recognized to have provided--be problematic, and I
think Dr. Bigot is having a remarkable effect on fixing that.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay.
Dr. Prager. So I think the whole fusion community is very
delighted with the progress over the last year.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Well, Dr. Bigot, are you considering
requesting any changes to the organizational structure going
forward?
Dr. Bigot. Oh, no. I do believe that we have now, okay,
tried it to change the culture not from just the top managers--
Mr. Loudermilk. Right.
Dr. Bigot. --but down to all the staff in order that we
work in what I call an integrated way. Everybody has to feel
that they are the owner of this global project, and fully
accountable for its progress. This is why it is so important to
have a schedul and to stick to the schedule-with many clear
milestone in such a way that everybody feels fully committed to
deliver.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Well, thank you.
Dr. Prager, fusion energy has often been described as being
50 years away. What do we know now that we didn't know ten to
fifteen years ago that will give us the confidence that we are
making some progress?
Dr. Prager. Yes, I think the joke is 30 years away.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay.
Dr. Prager. There's been a lot of progress over the last 15
years in various ways. One, scientifically, a big challenge is
how do you control 100 million degree plasma, keep the heat in
effectively, keep it from what we say going unstable and kind
of blowing out like a tire blowing out. And in the last 15
years we've controlled it in ways that I couldn't imagine when
I started to work in this field.
There's aspects of the plasma that, when I started to work,
we just had to accept that it existed like bad weather,
particularly turbulence in the plasma. Now, we, through--partly
through experiment and through competition and theory we have
ways that we can actually control the turbulence in the plasma.
And therefore, this gives us greater confidence that ITER will
succeed and that we can design a successful fusion reactor.
You've heard a lot about the problem of surrounding 100
million degree plasma by a hot material. Well, in experiments
over the last 15 years there's been ways to magnetically
channel the heat out and spread it out over surfaces to
alleviate that problem. Computation has been spoken about a
lot, that we have much better predictive capabilities.
Looking a little bit into the future, there are new
breakthroughs in technology outside of fusion that could have a
big impact such as magnets they can make very strong magnetic
fields. So there's been very good steady progress that's not
solved anything by any means but bolstered our confidence that
will move well in the future.
Mr. Loudermilk. Well, thank you. I'm out of time so, Mr.
Chair, I yield back.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentleman.
And the gentlelady from California is recognized.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you very much. This is really
important hearing, I think, and I'm hoping it's not the last
hearing that we have on this subject.
You know, I remember when I first started working on fusion
issues that people who were looking at magnetic versus IFE, it
was like a religion. And I think we've actually moved past that
now where people are seeing it's a--you know, we need to have a
broad examination of the entire field, and I'm certainly in
that spot. So I hope that my questions about the NIF will not
be misconstrued as being only on the IFE pursuit.
But, as you know, Dr. Hsu, we've talked before about the
National Ignition Facility, which obviously is a critical
facility for this national Stockpile Stewardship Program, but
it's also an important element of our science community. The
National Academy report in 2013 outlined some efforts that
might accelerate progress, including additional investments,
better coordination--you've read the report. I won't recite
everything.
I'm not--I keep mentioning this, and when the Department of
Energy folks come, they cite things that the report didn't say,
and I'm working with Dr. Moniz to have clarity on that.
But given the recommendations that they made, the National
Academy made in terms of pursuing expanding NIF to include the
direct drive and alternative modes of ignition, crafting and
coordinating the joint plan for IFE research, Scientific
Advisory Committee, and the like, can you comment whether that
would actually improve the situation at--with IFE at the NIF in
particular? Would it enhance the billions of dollars investment
we've already made?
Dr. Hsu. Yes. I agree with those findings and the original
rationale for standing up the HEDLP program. NIF is indeed
meant--its primary mission is indeed stockpile stewardship, but
as you say, it's an impressive and world-class facility that
we've invested in. I believe there are opportunities on it. The
three lab directors--Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia--have stated
that fusion is a critical need for stockpile stewardship and
that the United States must be the first to achieve laboratory
fusion.
I believe that over its lifetime NIF should explore, if the
physics warrant, all the laser-based approaches. That includes
direct laser drive, indirect x-ray drive, as well as magnetized
approaches.
Ms. Lofgren. Right. Well, I'm just--you know, I have some
level of frustration that obviously the stockpile stewardship
mission was the primary mission. But the--and we have increased
the number of shots dramatically, as I'm sure you're aware. But
the facility itself is an underutilized resource, and that's
not to take away from what we're doing with ITER in other
areas. I mean, I--and when you think about what we spent on
imported oil alone in 2013, an estimated $388 billion for that
year on only imported oil, you know, investments in fusion
science research to me is a bargain.
Now, we can't--you know, I think we made a huge mistake by
setting a deadline on which we'd get ignition. How do you ever
do science? That is ridiculous. I don't know who thought that
up but it wasn't me. But, you know, I'm not so worried about
the development. If we--once we get ignition--when we opened
the National Ignition Facility, I had the chance to speak at
the opening, along with many others, and I remember saying,
once we get ignition, all the rest is just engineering. And,
you know, people laughed but I actually have a high degree of
confidence that things will take off once we clear that
science.
And so really I think our effort ought to be on supporting
the scientists to achieve that either, you know, we ought to
ramp up at the NIF but also support the other efforts so we can
achieve that incredibly important scientific milestone and then
see where we go from there. And it's not just an energy source,
but when you take a look at where we are and where we're going
to be shortly in a shortage of water, how do you do desal
without, you know, a limitless source of energy? I mean, we are
going to need this as a source of energy in the near future.
So I'm about out of time but I just--playing cleanup, I
just want to thank the three of you for your incredibly
important work, and I hope--you know, Dr. Foster is the only
physicist in the House. I am so glad that he is here. I hope
that you will look at our committee as a source of support and
that you will be in touch with us frequently, whether in formal
hearings or informally because I think there is bipartisan
interest in what you are doing.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentlelady.
And I think the gentleman from Florida has some more
questions.
Mr. Grayson. Looking back historically, we had a working
net-energy-producing fission reactor before we actually had the
first fission weapon detonated a couple of years earlier
actually. So now here we are. It's been 64 years since the
first fusion weapon was detonated, and we still don't have a
fusion reactor that produces net energy, nor are we apparently
even close to it. What's the problem, gentlemen? Let's start
with Dr. Bigot?
Dr. Bigot. The problem is to be able to have sustainable
production, you know, as you speak about the weapon-okay, we
are able to deliver a huge amount of fusion energy, but to make
it in a sustainable, fully controlled way is much more
challenging as you could expect.
So again, this technology is very challenging. Requiring
many different advanced technologies in cryogenics, in
electromagnetics, and so on. Quite recently, I visit China
where they have been able to assess and clearly demonstrate
that we have what we call the feeders, which are the cables
which will provide electricity to the coils--to the
superconducting coils. They succeed to demonstrate that we
could have as much--as many as, okay, nearly 70,000 amperes
flowing through that, okay. It's really challenging. We push
the technology very, very advanced, and making all this work as
a system is really challenging.
I don't, okay, believe that it was a minor achievement,
with the weapon as you mentioned, 64 years ago. But again, is
something really different to master these technologies over
the long-term, to have a consistent continuous production of
energy.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Prager?
Dr. Prager. Why has it taken so long? The fundamental
answer is that this is one of the most challenging scientific
and engineering enterprises ever undertaken by humankind,
period. It's really hard. But the difficulty is matched by how
transformative it will be when we succeed.
It required the development of a new field of science, the
field that--what we call plasma physics. So when the pioneers
in this field started out in the late 1950s, early '60s, this
field didn't hardly exist. In the last 50 years a new field of
science has been produced and developed, which is an enormous
accomplishment. This has shown up in progress in fusion. If you
look at fusion quantitative figures of merit, it beats Moore's
Law. By our key figure of merit, we've gone up a factor of
30,000 in the last 30 years or so. We have another factor of
six to go for commercial fusion.
It's taken long because you can't prove fusion on a
tabletop. You just can't do it. The science doesn't allow it.
We need machines like ITER, the major facilities in the United
States. It just takes time to build a major facility. So all
this stretches it out, and it's all--the overarching message
also is that it's all been underfunded over the years so we
could have gone faster.
So for an array of very understandable reasons, it's taken
a long time. But if you look at how far we've come, I think it
gives good basis for why the fusion community and scientists
that look at this problem are very confident that we will get
there.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Hsu?
Dr. Hsu. Yes, I think drawing on your weapons analogy, I
mean, we--like Dr. Prager said, we have come a very long way.
We're almost to the point of detonating that first weapon. And
I myself am interested in further work of miniaturizing it.
That's the analogy. But we've--I think the main point is that
it's a hard problem. We've come a long way. We're almost there
to demonstrating it and to put the extra plug in that there are
other ways we should be looking at that have the potential of
not needing such a huge facility, but we need to do that work
to know the answer.
Mr. Grayson. Let's say if the President of the United
States announced that by the year 2025 he wanted to have fusion
facilities all around the country as reactors providing net
energy, in other words, a sort of Manhattan Project for fusion.
What would that project actually look like, Dr. Prager?
Dr. Prager. You would parallelize. You would take more risk
and you would look--you would develop--you would solve problems
in parallel. Right now, we're doing it all serially, which
stretches everything out. We would begin a study to build--my
opinion--for example--it's going to be hypothetical. We would
design a facility which would be a pilot plant and demonstrate
net electricity production.
There would be some risk associated with it. It would be a
risk that it might not work or will work partially, but if you
really want a Manhattan Project, that could be the centerpiece
of the program. At the same time, you would have satellite
facilities that would solve the materials problems. We know
what facilities we need to build, and you would have a program
to develop more attractive fusion concepts. You would
parallelize and do many things in parallel if you wanted to
have a Manhattan Project.
Chairman Weber. Let me--Dr. Prager, let me break in here.
You said satellites----
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Chairman Weber. --to solve the material problems.
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Chairman Weber. Could that be done in existing labs?
Dr. Prager. No. So, for example, just to give one example,
in order to really study, as we would like to, how materials
behave when bombarded by neutrons that the fusion reactions
produce, you need a facility that can generate the neutrons. We
know what that facility is. We can design it and we can build
it. In round numbers it will cost $1 billion. So we can do that
in parallel with this pilot plant, as one example.
Chairman Weber. I yield back.
Mr. Grayson. Let's just continue. Who would like to go
next? What would that project--that Manhattan Project or a
pilot project, what would it look like?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. I do believe it is what was said, very
highly coordinated project with all the piece in order to move
forward. And again, if the President of the United States and
the other ITER members decide to have, okay, first fusion
producing by 2025, 2028, according to the best of all knowledge
now we have after five--after ten years of the ITER project, I
do believe it's feasible if we have a highly coordinated way.
And I agree: now we know what we have to do and we could
accelerate. But again, I don't want to oversell. Okay. It takes
time if we want to do it, okay, right, safely, okay. When you
have so many piece to assemble, okay, and it is very
requiring--again, I stress the point that you have to move
large piece, which are the same size as the one you are moving
in the shipyard and to put them with millimetric precision-you
can not rush so rapidly.
So again, do it straight in order to have this
demonstration facility but in parallel to have some more which
could consolidate the reliability of the installation in the
facilities.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Hsu?
Dr. Hsu. I agree with all that. I want to add a couple
things, though. One is I think for a true fusion crash program
you'd want to consider what the integrated reactor is going to
look like at the end. I mean, to build the capabilities and the
scientific understandings, you can study those things on
separate facilities, as was mentioned, but ultimately, a fusion
power plant has to tie everything together, and you would want
to consider that earlier in the process. So the integration is
important.
And secondly, you want to consider the criteria for a
practical power plant. Just because you can build it doesn't
mean that everyone is going to use it. It has to be practical
and usable and competitive. So thank you very much.
Mr. Grayson. I yield back.
Chairman Weber. Mr. Foster, I think you had some more?
Mr. Foster. Yes. I'd like to talk a little bit about the
physics risk of different machines. I mean, we've just--in the
case of NIF, you know, we saw a tremendous technical success, I
mean, in terms of delivering the laser power to the objected
succeeded--you know, I'm blown away by the--by, you know, the
success of that from a technical point of view but unexpected--
and despite having the access to the best supercomputers, the
best codes, there was new physics uncovered because it was a
big extrapolation from tested measured regimes of material.
And in the case of NIF they were very fortunate that
there's a very good secondary mission to the National Ignition
Facility, to the stockpile stewardship, all of the high energy
density physics that is to be done there. And so it's a
tremendous and ongoing successful facility.
In the case of ITER, you're building it to make fusion
power. If there are unexpected physics of plasmas that are
discovered that make the machine not work, that is a very
different class of problem.
So my question was is our current state of understanding of
the physics simulation of plasmas and the measurements made
such that ITER is really going to be operated in an understood
regime right now? Or are we extrapolating in ways that may have
some physics danger in not achieving the goals?
Stew, do you want to give that a shot?
Dr. Prager. ITER is an experiment, and if we knew with 99
percent confidence that it would work as we hope, we wouldn't
bother to build it; we would just move to the next step. So
ITER is to teach us how to control burning plasmas.
What's the level of confidence that we will in fact succeed
in getting a burning plasma 10 times more energy out than in
and be able to control it? I think the confidence is high but
it's not 99 percent or we wouldn't be doing the experiment.
So if you look at--you can step through the different
physics issues. You know, will we be able to confine the
energy? Well, that, we think so. There you can extrapolate
pretty well from current experiments. Will the alpha particles
that are generated in the fusion reaction cause instabilities
that wreck the plasma? Well, we have good computation and we
have simulated experiments in current facilities that lead us
to think that it'll probably be okay. And on and on. But the
challenge of a burning plasma is all these phenomenon interact
at one time. It's a highly complex, coupled system, and when
you start to burn, it changes.
So I think the summary statement is the fusion community
has pretty good confidence that this will succeed for fusion
power, but it is an experiment. That's why--if we--it's--every
experiment is some reasonable extrapolation from the precursor.
Mr. Foster. Okay. Yes. But when there were difficulties
encountered in the ignition campaign at NIF, there is no
shortage of theorists to come out of the woodwork and say----
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Mr. Foster. --well, we told you in the initial design
studies you needed 10 megajoules on target to make this----
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Mr. Foster. --certain to work, and we told you so. Are
there a similar group of people standing in the background
saying, look, there's a good chance that ITER is going to run
into physics problems or really is there a much better
consensus? Is that----
Dr. Prager. Both. I think there is a consensus that we well
likely have the physics knowhow to succeed in ITER. At the same
time, physicists are by nature--we're supposed to be skeptics
so we are--every day we're pointing out problems that, you
know, can kill ITER but won't really kill ITER. So they both go
on all the time.
I think the extrapolation from inertial fusion facilities
before NIF to NIF is greater than the extrapolation from
existing fusion facilities to ITER. And so I think we have a
pretty good shot that if we permit Dr. Bigot to complete the
experiment that it will ultimately be successful.
Mr. Foster. Okay. And can the same be said when you're
looking at stellarator designs, other magnetic geometries and
so on, or are there a different class of uncertainties there?
Dr. Prager. Similar kinds of uncertainties, and when we
speak about next-step stellarators, we're not at the present
time thinking of a burning plasma but we're testing somewhat
different magnetic configuration that's been tested before. So
it's always an extrapolation, and whenever we build the new
experiments, it's always a judgment call of how far you go, as
you are saying, how far you extrapolate so that you'll do
something exciting without going over the cliff.
And so I would say in the last 25 years or so in the United
States in magnetic fusion we've erred on the side of being too
conservative.
Mr. Foster. And will a lot of the uncertainties be resolved
with the data from the German machine in terms of stellarator
or are there--or is that really not a ``modern design'' so you
won't have that data?
Dr. Prager. It's a very--yes, so Germany has just this last
few months started a new experiment. It's a fantastic,
modernized, optimized stellarator design. It will be enormously
informative. But in addition, the stellarator design has
enormous design space. So, for example, the German one, as
fantastic----
Chairman Weber. Dr. Prager, let me break in real quick.
Dr. Prager. Yes.
Chairman Weber. Didn't you say Germany and China was a----
Dr. Prager. Germany and Japan.
Chairman Weber. Japan, thank you.
Dr. Prager. So Japan has--there are two sort of billion-
dollar-class facilities. The one in Japan has been operating
for quite a while with extremely valuable information. The
German one is an extremely highly optimized, modern facility,
and it's fantastic. Well, one small but--though it extrapolates
to a very large size reactor, probably bigger than ITER.
So, for example, there are ideas that we have in the United
States to take all the advantages of the stellarator at have it
be more compact, and that's what we'd like--one example of what
we might want to do in the United States.
Mr. Foster. All right. Let's see. If I could have just a
couple more minutes here?
Chairman Weber. Yes, sir, you bet.
Mr. Foster. And I'd like to sort of return to the painful,
you know, project parts of the question here. You know, the
United States, you know, a few years back signed up for nine
percent of what was then--please correct me if I'm wrong--you
know, roughly a $12 billion U.S. project. Is that roughly the
understanding what the initial time that we signed up for ITER?
And now it is--we are now carrying nine percent of something
that is several times larger.
You know, that has caused a lot of pain in the Department
of Energy Office of Science budget, and so that's one of the
reasons why, you know, we're--you know, we're seeing, you know,
what the Senate has done in the last few--has proposed in the
last few cycles.
And so I was wondering, you know, what--you know, what--
let's say that the Senate wins, you know, every--for the last
few budget cycles the House has been restoring money that the
Senate cut, you know, for ITER. And so I imagine in those
circumstances you must have at least been starting to do
contingency planning to find--to understand if that is a fatal
blow for the ITER project if this time through the Senate wins.
Is that--what can you say about that? Is that unquestionably a
fatal blow or do you think that if you lose nine percent of the
funding to the project it will still--you know, that you'll
still find ways to work around it?
Dr. Bigot. Okay. Again I will stress the point. For sure
money is important, but industrial and scientific capacity for
me are even more important. And if the United States, okay,
which are now the most powerful, as I said, in science and,
okay, industry, will pull out from the ITER, it will be a real
drawback for the project. It's not so easy to recover from
expertise which has been developed in this country in the
condition which was explained, okay, just in a few minutes.
So for me, again, I will really stress out that it is very
important that all the ITER members and even, as it was said,
some new one come in in such a way we get the best of the
knowledge because we need absolutely frontiers, okay, expertise
in many, many fields, and it was not easy to afford.
I just want to point a fact. When we start with the ITER,
okay, the superconducting material, the superconducting
material we need, it was 15 tons produced per year worldwide.
In many different, okay, facility, we have no standard quality.
We need this specific material 650 tons in order to be able to
make, okay, ITER working. And so we have been coordinating the
work, and if, okay, some partners was missing, we will fail. It
takes six years to develop all this because now we have a 115-
tons-per-year capacity. So, again, this project is so large due
to the physics.
According to my point of view, you could not expect to
deliver, okay, massive fusion, okay, power if you have not the
proper size to do that. I could explain to you in more detail,
you know----
Mr. Foster. I'm--I guess I am--I don't want to over-claim,
but I think I'm probably the only Member of Congress that's
designed and built a 100,000-ampere superconducting power
transmission line, so I understand----
Dr. Bigot. So you know that. You know that.
Mr. Grayson. I haven't.
Mr. Foster. I understand--oh, I'm sorry, Ranking Member
Grayson. My apologies. The--but this is--you know, I have
massive respect for what you've accomplished on this
superconductor front, you know, to get industrially produced
superconductor on the scale needed.
On the other hand, when the United States signed up for the
project, you know, the representation was made that this
project was ready to go to an extent that in retrospect
probably wasn't the case. And so this is, you know, one of the
things that we have to understand is, you know, given this
history of cost growth is this really it? Do we have a schedule
and a budget that we can really plan around and understand? And
that's--you know, that's one of the tough questions that we
have to struggle with here.
Dr. Bigot. Okay. I want to make you fully aware that when I
come in with my own, okay, professional experience, when I
dedicate myself to something, I want to deliver. It's why I
have been working very, very straight in order to have a best
evaluation of the cost of the schedule we propose, and I'm very
pleased to say that as an independent review panel with 14 best
world expert has been going through all our schedule and, okay,
cost estimate and I show on my slide they say it is complete,
it is available, and we believe to do that.
And now I want all the, okay, IO staff, domestic agency,
ITER organization staff, domestic agency staff, and suppliers
to feel fully committed to deliver within budget and within,
okay, schedule.
Mr. Foster. You know, your predecessors also, I'm sure,
were equally committed to understanding the project cost, I
would hope. Anyway, I don't want to get too much into history,
but, you know, we have to be conscious of things.
And another possible risk is that the United States will
fulfill its bargains, and another country that you crucially
depend on will decide it does not have the resources to commit.
And how do we--how should we evaluate that risk as well?
Chairman Weber. Does the gentleman intend to wrap up here
in about a minute or so?
Mr. Foster. That's fine. I'm happy if that's my last
question. If I can get that answer, though, in.
Dr. Bigot. So clearly, there is a large interest of fusion
in the world. I expect that the United States will stay in. If
not, for me the project is so important that we will have to go
on and on, okay. But again, I am not really envisaging such
hypothesis because I do believe if we are clear enough in what
are the benefit for the United States to stay in, they will
feel that it is worth to move on.
Mr. Foster. All right. And I really thank you. And I want
to be sure I don't be seen as coming off not supportive of this
project. I just want to understand the dimensions of the cliff
that we're playing near when we talk about the United States
pulling out.
Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentleman.
I thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the
members for their questions. The record will remain open for
two weeks for additional comments and written questions from
the Members. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Additional Material for the Record
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