Who wins and who loses from nuclear fusion?

The new advance in nuclear fusion has generated uncertainties and raises numerous questions, many of which still cannot be given very specific answers, although possible impacts and trends are pointed out, according to experts. This way of obtaining unlimited, cheap and clean energy has been talked about for years. Now the doubts are whether this technology, once this progress has been achieved, can pass and in what period of time to the commercial field, that is to say to a more generalized use and at what cost, according to sources from one of the large specialized consultancies. These are the keys that will serve to give more concrete answers, according to analysts. “You have to see what this technology needs to work and the time it takes to become general,” they say.

Lluís Pinós, president of the energy commission of the Col.legi d’Enginyers Industrials de Catalunya, recalls that the construction of a nuclear plant takes at least a decade. And that is if it were decided today to launch a project, which is why, in principle, it will take much longer. Depending on the ability to transfer the production of this energy with more or less speed to the market, we will see how it affects the transition process towards the decarbonization of the economies in which most countries are embarked, but a first intuition is that it could accelerate the increase in weight of clean energies to the detriment of those of fossil origin.

Fossil sources such as coal, oil or gas are the ones that stand to lose if nuclear fusion prospers as an inexhaustible and clean source of energy. That is the main intuition of the experts. “An energy of this type can displace traditional nuclear and energies originating from fossil fuels,” says Pinós. In fact, the road map of most countries already includes the progressive replacement of coal or gas by cleaner sources such as those from the sun or water, which are those that have inexhaustible raw materials, as well as the closure gradual phase of traditional nuclear power plants, as is the case in Spain. The last of the closures is that of the Trillo plant, scheduled for 2035, although there are advocates of extending the life of these facilities.

The speed of decarbonization that has already begun will depend on the speed that this progress can be transferred to mass energy production. In the opinion of one of the large specialized consultancies, “energies originating from fossil fuels will gradually lose relative weight.” But it will be, they add, surely something gradual. “Sending strong messages about the disappearance of, for example, natural gas, would only catapult its price further and push many industries to look for other more polluting technologies, they warn.

In any case, it will not be a question of a disappearance overnight, at least with the technologies available today. Coal maintains a marked downward trend and so does gas, although its role as a substitute for coal and as a cushion to alleviate the intermittencies of renewable energies still makes it necessary, according to experts.

The role of renewable energies, those that are cleaner, will tend to grow in the coming years within the transition process foreseen by the main world economies. In Spain, in general, progress is being made by leaps and bounds in its implementation, but not in all communities. Hence the criticism that rains down on the Government of the Generalitat for the delay in the implementation of this type of energy, especially from business spheres. The great challenge for them to still play a greater role has to do with the storage of production that is not used instantly, through batteries or the development of green hydrogen.

That is why Spain has made a commitment to this latest technology and has sealed an agreement to build a tube from Barcelona to Marseille to transport it in the future. In any case, there are countries, such as France, that also defend the so-called pink hydrogen that, instead of coming from renewable sources, comes from nuclear energy and this has caused discrepancies with Spain. One of the options that the country has to grow in clean energy sources, in any case, is offshore wind. Of 50 prototypes that are currently being worked on, a total of 15 are being made in Spain, according to sources from one of the large consultancies in the sector.

As fast as nuclear fusion is brought to market as a mainstream energy source, fuels like gas will continue to play an important role in the energy system. And not only natural, since renewable gases also have to play their role, because decarbonization is not just equivalent to electrification, according to Pinós. In any case, “there is no doubt that natural gas will not disappear suddenly” nor does it have an expiration date “because security of supply must be guaranteed,” he adds. And it is that “natural gas has an important role in the transition towards a green economy, at least as a safety cushion for renewables.”

In any case, “little by little” it will lose weight and will be replaced by biomethane or green hydrogen, according to the experts consulted. As far as nuclear fusion is concerned, we will have to see how long it takes to capture a good part of the total energy ‘mix’. In any case, in the opinion of the experts, everything indicates that it will have widespread implementation in the long term and its impact on accelerating the energy transition will have a lot to do with the rate of practical application that it may have.

There are factors such as costs that, at the beginning of a technology, are usually high and decrease as its use becomes more general, as happened in its day with photovoltaic solar energy, for example, and that today have reached a very high level. competitive.