The potential of nuclear fusion

Assembly of the world’s largest nuclear fusion project has started in France. What does this mean for the future of clean energy and the project professionals working in the nuclear industry?

The ITER nuclear fusion project in France reached a milestone in July when its five-year assembly began in Provence. Ultra-hot plasma is expected to start being generated in late 2025 by the world’s largest experimental fusion facility, which is a global collaboration between Europe, China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the US.

Fusion research, which began in the 1920s, is aimed at developing a safe, abundant and environmentally responsible energy source that replicates the process that powers the sun and stars. It involves heavy hydrogen atoms fusing together and releasing a vast amount of energy. The process requires a temperature of 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the core of the sun. The plasma it produces is contained within a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber called a tokamak, which was pioneered in the 1950s by Russian scientists.

A 3D puzzle

The €20bn (£18.2bn) project is the most complex engineering endeavour in history, involving 3,000 tonnes of superconducting magnets and 200km of superconducting cables among billions of components that will be used to assemble the giant reactor, which will weigh 23,000 tonnes. All the assembly parts must be kept at –269°C by the world’s largest cryogenic plant.

“Enabling the exclusive use of clean energy will be a miracle for our planet,” said ITER director-general Bernard Bigot at the launch of the assembly phase. But, he said, “Constructing the machine piece by piece will be like assembling a three-dimensional puzzle on an intricate timeline [and] with the precision of a Swiss watch.” The project was originally conceived in 1985 and is intended to be a proof-of-concept of large-scale fusion, not a design for a future commercial reactor.

ITER’s development is being built on the foundation of work created by the Joint European Torus (JET) project, based at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the UK, which will switch on for the first time in 2021. In operation since 1983, JET was explicitly designed to study plasma behaviour in conditions and dimensions approaching those required in a fusion reactor. Today, its primary task is to prepare for the construction and operation of ITER, acting as a test-bed for ITER technologies and plasma operating scenarios.

Revolutionising energy

Tom Eastup, practice lead for P3M consulting at independent consultancy DAS, has spent a year working on the ITER project at the Cadarache research centre (he also helped establish the new Nuclear Project Management SIG, a joint initiative between APM and the Nuclear Institute). He told Project that: “Nuclear fusion has the potential to change the energy landscape completely. If it can be brought into the mainstream energy mix at scale, we will have a plentiful supply of low-carbon and stable energy and invigorate the nuclear industry considerably.

“Having spent more than a year working on the ITER site, I am genuinely in awe of not just the complexity [of the project], but also of the successful collaboration between a plethora of nations and international organisations, all behind a common purpose.” If nuclear fusion is to become a reality in the UK or Europe, the international community will need to continue this cross-border cooperation, not least in the wake of the UK fully leaving the EU at the end of this year.

Nuclear fusion projects indicate a renewed interest in the role that nuclear power could play in achieving the UK government’s target to be a net-zero carbon emitter by 2050. A combination of new power stations being constructed and the decommissioning of EDF Energy’s fleet of Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors within the next decade also points to an exciting time within the nuclear industry, particularly for project managers seeking a unique challenge, according to Eastup.

Private companies are also pursuing fusion technology, including two private laboratories in Oxfordshire: Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion, both of which have set the ambitious goal of delivering a working reactor ready for commercialisation by 2030, according to the Financial Times.

Project managers needed!

“I believe we will see an expansion of the sector as decommissioning grows, new-build projects advance and projects related to new technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors, Advanced Modular Reactors and fusion, all find the investments they require to progress. For project managers, working in an industry that is on the cusp of an exciting growth phase presents an opportunity for stable, challenging and stimulating work for many years to come,” Eastup said.

There are unique challenges that come with the job. “Managers of nuclear projects must deal with rigorous safety standards, complex hazards, funding cycles and limitations, advanced – or sometimes completely new – technology and finally an intricate and often politically charged stakeholder landscape. All these make managing projects within the nuclear industry a stimulating and rewarding experience,” Eastup added.

The inconsistency challenge

However, while the UK might have one of the safest nuclear sectors in the world, its reputation suffers from a perception of inconsistent delivery performance, according to Eastup. “Most nuclear projects are high profile, so when things are late or over budget, they make the national media, whilst on-time and on-budget projects go unnoticed. Nevertheless, there is a perception among government and public stakeholders that we could do better, and we need to address this,” he warned.

This inconsistency challenge can be addressed in part by the profession being quicker to adopt innovation, whether in digital technologies to support efficient delivery or new collaborative delivery models and organisational constructs that change the classical balance of risk and incentivisation. Furthermore, Eastup believes that the project management profession needs to be better at “learning from each other and from outside the industry – especially related sectors such as construction, where the pace of innovation is perhaps quicker, as it is driven by a different type of commercial pressure.”