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| Fig. 1: Funding of fusion energy in the United States, inflation-adjusted to December 2020 dollars, as per Table 1. [3-24] The blue curve shows the total fusion energy funding, the red curve shows the US funding for ITER, and the green curve shows the difference between the two. |
Despite decades of research and government support, fusion energy remains a technology of the future - with tremendous potential but still far from commercial viability. Fusion energy reactors, which generate electricity from the heat produced from the fusion of the nuclei of light atoms, like hydrogen, have many advantages over conventional energy technologies. Fusion reactors do not produce harmful carbon dioxide as fossil fuel plants do, they produce far less nuclear waste than nuclear fission reactors, and unlike wind and solar sources, they can be run 24 hours a day. However, there are many technical challenges associated with fusion energy, primarily because fusion reactions must occur within a hot plasma in order to generate energy. This condition necessities extensive basic research to understand how to confine plasma within a reactor and develop materials which can withstand sustained plasma exposure. [1] Such research often requires large-scale experiments which require government funding to progress. Thus, many attribute the slow progress of fusion energy development in the United States to insufficient federal funding. This article will give a broad overview of the history of fusion funding in the United States.
The United States' magnetic fusion energy program started within the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) around 1951, and was declassified in 1957. [1] This declassification enabled international scientific collaborations and discussions of fusion research. The 1950s and 1960s saw the early development of several plasma confinement concepts including the tokamak, stellarator, pinch and mirror methods. [2] The tokamak design was considered especially promising, and a fossil fuel energy crisis in the 1970s provided the political will to invest in large-scale tokamak studies, including the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). Fusion energy, overseen by the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) from 1976- 1978, accordingly saw a large increase in funding in the mid 1970s and early 1980s. [1]
As the energy crisis subsided, however, funding in fusion energy fell again in the mid-1980s. The fusion energy sciences program, now being overseen by the Department of Energy (DOE), found difficulty acquiring funding for new large tokamak projects. The successor to TFTR, the Compact Ignition Torus (CIT) underwent significant planning in the late 1980s, but was canceled by Congress in the early 1990s. [1] Faced with the increasing costs of building the larger experimental facilities that would be needed to demonstrate fusion energy, the conversation in Congress began to shift towards international cooperations where the cost of new tokamak facilities could be shared by several countries.
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| Table 1: U.S. fusion energy funding budgets plotted in Fig. 1. The second column shows raw budget numbers with no inflation adjustment. The values prior to 2001 are from Rowberg, and give congressional appropriation budgets. [3] The remainder are from official reports of the enacted budget allocation. [4-22] The value for 2021 is the current DOE budget request. The third column is the funding for ITER from official reports of the enacted budget allocation. [4-22] The fourth column is the historical consumer price index. [23,24] The last two columns are the first two columns inflation-adjusted to December 2020 dollars using the CPI in the fourth column. |
The concept for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) appeared in the late 1980s. This collaboration, between the European Union, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States, planned for the construction of a large "demo" reactor in France in which the costs would be shared by the collaborating countries. While Congress decided that ITER would be a more cost-effective option for advancing tokamak technology than new domestic tokamaks, Congress has wavered at times in its funding commitment to ITER. From 1988-1999, Congress provided funds for planning on the ITER project. Congress pulled the United States out of ITER in 1999, before later rejoining in 2004. [3,7] Congress directed the DOE to cut United States contributions to ITER again in 2008, although DOE documents suggest the DOE still managed to provide a small portion of the promised funds to ITER that year, demonstrating the DOE's committment to the project. [11,25] The United States has committed to covering 9.1% of ITER's construction costs, and 13% of ITER's operations costs once it begins operation. [22] Most of the construction costs are "in-kind" contributions, in which the United States provides materials and equipment to the construction. This arrangement enables some components of ITER to still be developed and built in the United States before being delivered to ITER, maintaining some tokamak fusion research in the United States related to ITER.
Domestically, the United States continues smaller-scale fusion research projects. In 1995, Congress directed the DOE to restructure itself primarily as a science program rather than as an energy program. [3] Research on tokamaks and other reactor concepts, including stellerators, continued, but without new large scale facilities. Research in plasma science and materials development became larger research focuses in order to work within the domestic fusion budget, which has been essentially flat since 1995. [22]
The United States had a period of strong funding for fusion energy in the mid 1970s to mid 1980s, but has since deferred the construction of large tokamak fusion reactor facilities to international collaborations. The 1970s to 1980s period, when the United States saw urgency in advancing new energy technologies, promoted rapid domestic research into tokamak reactors. However, this urgency was not sustained over a long enough term for tokamak reactors to come to fruition as a commercially viable technology. The United States has continued to invest considerable funding and resources into fusion energy over its 60-70 year history, but perhaps not at high enough levels to suggest that fusion energy is an urgent priority for the United States. While ITER and other projects may eventually make commercially viable fusion a reality, it is hard not to wonder if fusion energy would be much further along today had the political will been there thirty years ago to make it so.
© Rachel Margraf. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] U. Schumacher, "Status and Problems of Fusion Reactor Development," Naturwiss. 88, 102 (2001).
[2] L. A. El-Guebaly, "Fifty Years of Magnetic Fusion Research (1958-2008): Brief Historical Overview and Discussion of Future Trends," Energies 3, 1067 (2010).
[3] R. E. Rowberg, "Congress and the Fusion Energy Sciences Program: A Historical Analysis," Congressional Research Service, RL30417, January 2000.
[4] C. Behrens, "Appropriations for FY2002: Energy and Water Development," Congressional Research Service, RL31007, February 2002, p. 9.
[5] C. Behrens, "Appropriations for FY2003: Energy and Water Development," Congressional Research Service, RL31307, February 2003, p. 14.
[6] "FY 2005 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Nuclear Waste Disposal, Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal, Departmental Administration, Inspector General, Working Capital Fund," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/ME-0035, Volume 4, February 2004, p. 11.
[7] "FY 2006 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Nuclear Waste Disposal, Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal, Departmental Administration, Inspector General, Working Capital Fund," DOE/ME-0049, Volume 4, February 2005, pp. 11, 388.
[8] "FY 2007 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Nuclear Waste Disposal, Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal, Departmental Administration, Inspectcor General, Working Capital Fund," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-005, Volume 4, February 2008, pp. 11, 468.
[9] "FY 2008 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Nuclear Waste Disposal, Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal, Departmental Administration, Inspector General, Loan Guarantee Program, Working Capital Fund," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-017, Volume 4, February 2007, pp. 13, 407.
[10] "FY 2009 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-027, Volume 4, February 2008, pp. 7, 394.
[11] "FY 2010 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-038, Volume 4, May 2009, pp. 7, 351.
[12] "FY 2011 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0050, Volume 4, February 2010, pp. 7, 244.
[13] "FY 2012 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0060, Volume 4, February 2011, pp. 7, 243.
[14] "FY 2013 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0074, Volume 4, February 2012, pp. 11, 185.
[15] "FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Advanced Resedarch Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0087, Volume 4, April 2013, pp. 3, 165.
[16] "FY 2015 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0099, Volume 4, March 2014, p 118.
[17] "FY 2016 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Advanced Reseaerch Projects Agency - Energy," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0110, Volume 4, February 2015, p. 13.
[18] "FY 2017 Congressional Budget Request: Science, Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0122, Volume 4, February 2016, p. 15.
[19] "FY 2018 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0131, Volume 4, May 2017, p. 13.
[20] "FY 2019 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0142, Volume 4, March 2018, p. 13.
[21] "FY 2020 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0154, Volume 4, March 2019, p. 13.
[22] "FY 2021 Congressional Budget Request: Science," U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/CF-0165, Volume 4, February 2020, p. 15.
[23] "Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012," United States Census Bureau, August 2011, Table 724, p. 473.
[24] "Consumer Price Index - December 2020," U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDL-21-0024," January 2021, Table 5.
[25] "Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2008," Congressional Research Service, RL34048, February 2008, p. 4.