The Canadian and British governments have agreed to co-operate on advancing the development of nuclear fusion.
Under an agreement signed in Paris Wednesday, the two governments said they will encourage regulators, government agencies, universities, laboratories and private companies to combine efforts on fusion-related research. The two countries did not commit any new funding under the arrangement, and each will bear its own costs. Officials for Natural Resources Canada said the first order of business is to develop a work plan.
“Arguably, the U.K. is the leading country doing fusion R&D in the world,” said Frédéric Beauregard-Tellier, the director-general of nuclear energy at the federal department.
Fusion involves combining two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one – a process that releases enormous amounts of energy. It occurs in a hot gas known as plasma and is the same reaction that powers the sun and other stars. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), fusion could generate four times as much energy as nuclear fission, which involves splitting heavier atoms – the process used by today’s reactors to generate electricity. And unlike fission, fusion does not produce long-lived radioactive waste.
But here on Earth, where we can’t replicate the intense gravity of the sun’s core, fusing deuterium and tritium (the isotopes of hydrogen that are the preferred fuels in most fusion experiments) requires temperatures greater than 100 million degrees Celsius. Controlling plasma at such temperatures with powerful magnetic fields or lasers is technically challenging and requires huge amounts of energy.
Antoine de la Chevrotière, Natural Resources Canada’s deputy director of nuclear energy, said Canada can help advance research in robotics for fusion applications and around materials that can withstand such extreme environments. But its primary role in the collaboration with Britain will be providing fuel and related expertise.
Canada’s CANDU reactor fleet produces tritium as fission neutrons interact with the heavy water coolant and moderator. Ontario Power Generation periodically removes that tritium from heavy water at a special plant at its Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont. Dr. de la Chevrotière said Canada sells small quantities of the isotope to labs in the United States and Britain, but the memorandum of understanding will enable Canada to strengthen its partnership with the latter country.
“The market for tritium is emerging, especially for fusion,” he said. “Some studies suggest that there’s not enough tritium, that the capacity is not sufficient, to meet the demand from all these demonstration plants.”
The nuclear industry has for decades attempted to design and build machines to produce the extreme conditions required for fusion. The IAEA held its first fusion conference in 1961. Physicist Richard Post declared at a symposium in 1971 that “fusion will be and needs to be achieved” and that its first applications might arrive by the 1980s.
But progress proved far slower. One veteran physicist focused on developing fusion wrote in 2017 that, if ever developed, fusion reactors would share the many serious problems that plague their fission cousins, contrary to the optimistic pronouncements of their promoters.
Recent advances, though, have reignited interest. In 2022, for instance, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that one of its laboratories had successfully conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history.
“There’s a recognition that the challenges are significant, both technically and economically, and so it really makes sense to collaborate globally,” Dr. de la Chevrotière said.
According to the Fusion Industry Association, 43 private companies were focused on developing fusion technology globally last year, most reporting just a handful to a few dozen employees. Of those, 25 based in the U.S. had attracted most of the investment, but “the U.K. and Canada have serious advanced contenders,” it noted in a report.
Richmond, B.C.-based General Fusion is among a handful of companies that have attracted US$200-million or more in investment. The company received a grant of $13.9-million in 2009 from Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a federal vehicle that channels funding to private “cleantech” companies, and another $12.75-million in 2016.
Mr. Beauregard-Tellier said this is Canada’s first formal memorandum of understanding on co-operation, but his department continues to seek other partners.
“We’re talking with the U.S. Department of Energy about identifying areas where we can formalize our partnership on fusion,” he said. “And then with some other countries too – certainly our French colleagues are obviously also very invested in nuclear energy.”
Editor’s note: Feb. 15, 2024: In a previous version of this article, General Fusion’s headquarters was incorrectly named. The company is based in Richmond, B.C. This version has been corrected.
Matthew McClearn