General Atomics hosted a celebration Thursday in a building the size of an airplane hangar in Poway, attended by scientists and local VIPs.
All the fuss was about a big round piece of metal on display before the seated crowd. It was one part of a magnet, so powerful it could lift an aircraft carrier out of the water. The item on display at General Atomics was only one-sixth of the whole assembly. The other five parts will be stacked on top of it, making it the height of a five-story building.
Those five parts are already en route to France, to an international fusion plant called ITER, formerly the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The people running the project have given the magnet a name: the Central Solenoid.
John Smith has been working on this magnet since the project was conceived in 2011. He said a huge magnetic force is needed to contain fusion reactions, like the ones that occur on the sun.
“The plasma that is replicating what happens on the sun gets ten times hotter than the sun itself,” said Smith, the senior director of engineering and projects at General Atomics.
“So how do you contain something that hot? What we do is create a magnetic bottle with a series of magnets," he added. "It’s a magnetic bottle that holds the plasma where the fusion reactions occur in order to keep it from touching anything, melting or burning things out.”
Fusion energy is created by smashing atoms together and causing them to fuse. The potential of fusion energy has been theorized since the end of World War II. The goal of creating nuclear fusion energy has been maddeningly elusive, but now it seems within reach. And it means having a virtually limitless supply of clean energy.
Smith said getting there is vital to running data centers for artificial intelligence and all those electric cars we’ll be driving, to name a couple.
“Everything that we’re doing today says that our electricity demand is only going to go up. That’s why fusion is needed," he said. "You need to have some kind of clean, limitless energy source to power the future of the world.”
There are still technical challenges to iron out. Fusion energy also requires financial investments and the construction of expensive power plants. But people at General Atomics believe that financial support system is taking shape.
“The fusion ecosystem is undergoing a rapid change. We have several private companies that are working closely with publicly funded organizations to demonstrate a viable path to fusion energy in the 2030s,” said Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president for General Atomics Energy Group.
Whenever fusion energy does become a reality, one local congressman says San Diego has been a big part of it.
“Our energy future is being written right here, right here in San Diego. I look forward to working with you, and continue to support you to make that happen,” said Scott Peters (D-CA-50).
