Author: Office of technology assessment washington dc

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

For over four decades the federal government has supported research to develop the power of fusion energy for commercial electric power production. Fusion proponents note that the supply of fusion fuels is virtually inexhaustible, and that environmental impacts may be far less extensive than those of energy supplies currently in widespread use. Widely heralded experiments performed in 1993 and 1994 at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) produced unprecedented levels of fusion reactions and continued a trend of progress in fusion research. However, even the most optimistic proponents of fusion energy note that many scientific, engineering, and economic challenges remain to be met. Meeting these challenges sufficiently to construct a prototype commercial fusion powerplant may require several tens of billions of dollars in experimental facilities and research over the next several decades. This would require a considerable increase from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) current fusion energy program budget of $373 million, and a greater level of cost-sharing through international collaboration in fusion research and development. In 1987, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) concluded a major assessment of the fusion energy program and published the report Starpower: The U.S. and the International Quest for Fusion Energy. Since then, the U.S. fusion energy program has undergone a pronounced change as it has grappled with uncertain budgets that have grown less quickly than the need for larger, more capable, and more expensive machines.