MICRO FUSION

MICRO FUSION MOTIVATION:

INTRODUCTION:
Some countries, such as Austria and Ireland, have chosen to not permit generation of nuclear energy in their jurisdictions. Other countries such as France and Japan rely heavily on nuclear energy.

I will herein briefly present, from the rural Canadian perspective, an argument in favor of distributed small scale nuclear energy.

CANADIAN DATA:
Canada has a population of about 33 million people and a land area of about 9 million km^2. The Canadian population is about four times the population of Austria but the Canadian land area is more than 100 times the land area of Austria. Canada is geographically divided into provinces and territories. Ontario is the largest Canadian province with a population of about 12 million people. During the last half century the population of Canada has doubled, largely due to immigration.

The Canadian average population density of about 3.6 persons / km^2 is misleading. Over 80% or the Canadian population lives within less than 20% of the land area. In rural Canada the average population density is less than 0.7 persons / km^2. A typical family farm occupies about 4 km^2. Thus in rural Canada the average population density is less than 1% of the average population density in Austria. However, the per capita energy consumption in Canada is much larger than that of Austria, particularly in the transportation sector.

In Ontario the average consumption of liquid hydrocarbons is about 1330 litres per person per annum. However, in rural areas the average consumption of liquid hydrocarbons is about three times that amount.

Canada has a harsh climate. An unprotected person left outside overnight in mid-winter will usually die. Relatively temperate southern cities such as Toronto routinely experience winter temperatures below -25 degrees C. More northern interior cities such as Prince George experience winter temperatures below -60 degrees C. Central heating is not a luxury, it is an absolute necessity. Even vacant buildings must be heated to prevent plumbing freezing and to prevent structural damage due to condensation and freeze-thaw cycling. Advocates of solar heating forget that in northern Canada there are contiguous weeks or months in which there is no sunlight at all. Aboriginal people in the north relied on whale oil and seal fat for survival.

In effect there are two Canadas, urban Canada and rural Canada. Urban Canada primarily consists of an east-west string of cities located just north of the border with the USA. Urban Canada contains most of the Canadian population. Canadian cities are in many ways similar to cities in Europe and the USA.

The balance of the country is rural Canada. Rural Canada is very different from Europe. In rural Canada the population density is very low and the per capita consumption of liquid hydrocarbons is very high as compared to most other countries.

LIFE IN RURAL CANADA:
I will briefly describe day to day life in rural Canada to indicate why this life is so liquid hydrocarbon intensive. There are some people who say that rural Canadians should simply abandon their liquid hydrocarbon fuel intensive life style. However, that is a hypocritical view. These people forget that many countries around the world rely on energy, food, wood products and minerals exported from rural Canada.

Our family lives on the edge of rural Canada, about 100 km north of Toronto. The main benefits of our rural life are intangibles such as quiet, privacy, clean air, freedom from urban expectations and relative freedom from urban social problems.

However, there are significant costs of living in rural Canada, particularly for liquid hydrocarbon fuels. My family consists of myself (a retired engineer), my wife (a home maker), my son (a tradesman) and my daughter (an actress). When I was working I had to attend major buildings in Toronto and I drove about 40,000 km / year. My wife drives about 20,000 km / year. My son, who has to attend various work sites in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), drives about 50,000 km / year. My daughter, who maintains a small apartment near Vancouver, drives about 30,000 km / year. Thus our average per capita automobile driving is about 35,000 km / person / year resulting in consumption of over 3000 litres of liquid hydrocarbon fuel per person per year just for driving.

When our children were younger and could not drive themselves, they went to school by bus. Their preschool/elementary school was 8 km away. Their high schools were 15 km and 70 km away. Their post secondary educational institutions were 70 km to 200 km away. However, again these figures are deceptive. The school bus routes are not direct but wind back and forth over rural roads to collect students from pickup points convenient to their homes. A school bus route is often two to three times as long as the direct route. The costs of operating and maintaining a large fleet of buses is a major component of the rural education budget. Each school age child is in effect triggers annual consumption of a substantial amount of bus diesel fuel.

Then there is the energy for our home. The only utilities that we have are electricity and telephone. There is no utility supplied: natural gas, potable water, sewer, cable TV or chilled water. Our space heating and potable water heating are by combustion of furnace oil which is delivered by tanker truck. We have a drilled well with an electric pump for potable water. We have our own septic system. We have a satellite dish for TV reception. We have an electric air conditioning unit and we use electricity for cooking and refrigeration. Due to unreliable electricity supply we have a backup generator. We also have a tractor for property maintenance. Our consumption of liquid hydrocarbons for space heating, potable water heating, standby electricity generation and tractor power is about 1000 litres per person per year.

Once or twice per annum we visit other members of our family in western Canada or they come to see us. Either way there is at least 6000 km per person of air travel per round trip.

In short, the issue that most differentiates rural Canadians from people in Austria is Canadian's vastly greater per capita consumption of liquid hydrocarbon fuel. The reality is that day to day life in rural Canada requires much more liquid hydrocarbon fuel than does comparable day to day life in urban Canada or in Europe.

Liquid hydrocarbon fuel consumption in urban Canada is somewhat higher than in Europe due to urban sprawl and inadequate public transit. However, major Canadian cities such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are attempting to address this issue.

PETROLEUM:
When I was a child in school I was taught that Canadian liquid petroleum reserves were sufficient for several centuries. However, there was an erroneous implicit assumption that Canadians would be the only ones drawing down these liquid petroleum reserves. Now with ongoing oil exports the number of people drawing down these reserves has increased by two orders of magnitude, so the remaining life of these liquid petroleum reserves is only a few years rather than centuries. There is more oil available from tar sands, but recovery of this oil without use of nuclear heat results in substantial CO2 emissions.

LIQUID BIOFUELS:
As the petroleum reserves are depleted liquid fossil fuels must be replaced by liquid biofuels. However, producing liquid biofuels requires several energy intensive steps. These steps include carbon capture by plants from the atmosphere to form carbohydrates, agricultural management of the bio-matter, drying the bio-matter, removal of oxygen from the carbohydrates to form alcohols and/or oils and concentration of the alcohols and/or oils.

In Brazil, where there is abundant sunlight, all of these steps are solar powered. However, in Canada, where there is much less sunlight, the first step (carbon capture from the atmosphere to form carbohydrates) requires almost all the available solar energy. The other liquid biofuel production steps need primary energy from another source such as nuclear energy.

NUCLEAR ENERGY:
Nuclear electricity can be used to directly displace hydrocarbon fuels in some stationary and some limited distance mobile applications. However, in most longer distance transportation applications use of liquid hydrocarbons is essential to achieve the required energy and power density. For these applications nuclear energy is needed to convert plant carbohydrates into liquid hydocarbons.

Nuclear energy is available via two paths, fission and fusion. Fission energy is released when there is neutron induced breakup of fissionable heavy atoms such as uranium and plutonium. Fusion energy is released when there is combination of light atoms such as hydrogen and lithium.

SAFETY AND COST COMPARISONS:
Nuclear fission produces radioactive products that in some cases take thousands of years to naturally decay. Safe long term storage of fission products requires dedicated vaults in stable hard rock mountains. The amount of fission product nuclear waste can be reduced by fuel reprocessing. However, it is imperative to prevent diversion of fissionable material from fuel reprocessing into production of nuclear weapons.

A major advantage of fission power over fusion power is that the parasitic electric power needed to operate a fission power plant is much less than the corresponding amount of parasitic electric power needed to operate a fusion power plant with the same net electrical output. The lower parasitic electrical consumption of a fission power plant as compared to a fusion power plant substantially reduces the capital cost per net electrical kW of plant output.

However, a major disadvantage of fission as compared to fusion is that the continuing heat and radiation outputs from fission products after the chain reaction is turned off are far greater than the continuing heat and radiation outputs from fusion products after the fusion reactor is turned off. The contining heat and radiation outputs from fission products leads to potential for Loss of Coolant Accidents (LOCA) that have extremely serious public health consequences. Hence fusion is far safer than fission in terms of both consequences of a Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA) and irradiated fuel disposal.

CAPACITY:
Energy engineers do not get to choose whether or not they build energy supply capacity. Their only choice is from amongst the range of available technologies. The decisions as to how much capacity to build are largely population driven.

WIND ENERGY:
With respect to wind power Ontario is a leader in North America. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that remote wind power is extremely expensive. There is lots of wind energy in northern Ontario. However, the average transmission line length required to deliver that energy to cities in southern Ontario is about 1000 km. Furthermore, the transmission line utilization efficiency with wind power is less than half that of nuclear power. In an effort to control transmission costs Ontario is presently only developing wind resources that are within 300 km of load centers.

ECONOMICS:
However, when we assess the amount of prime energy that is required to displace the existing consumption of liquid fossil hydrocarbons, nearby wind power is not sufficient. The people of Ontario must make a hard choice between expensive nuclear power and even more expensive remote wind power.

It is from the perspective of replacing Canadian petroleum based liquid hydrocarbon consumption with synthetic biofuels that I view distributed fission based nuclear energy as being almost inevitable. Yes there are problems with nuclear energy, but those problems are manageable and are small compared to the problems with the energy supply alternatives.

MICRO FUSION:
Micro Fusion is a technology that provides a means of generating nuclear heat where it is needed. Micro Fusion can be constructed in small unit sizes that are suitable for liquid biofuel production. However, there is no escaping the reality that Micro Fusion is a nuclear technology, albeit a relatively friendly one. It will take sustained high oil prices together with major technical and educational efforts to convert Micro Fusion from a laboratory curiosity into a practical heating technology suitable for widespread use.

This web page last updated March 16, 2011