01x03 - Fusion

[bunniefuu]

[upbeat music]

Behind me is the entrance
to the JET Tokamak,

which is currently the
world's largest fusion reactor.

It routinely makes plasmas of
more than 100 million degrees,

five times hotter than
the center of the sun

and today is the hottest
place in our solar system.

[loud whooshing]

[bright music]

Global industrial revolution is underway.

[quick whooshing]

Yes, we have a technological challenge

for our environment, for the
wellbeing of the population

of the planet for civilization.

Driven by passionate,
dedicated individuals,

intent on shaping a new world.

I do it because I look
at my kids and I honestly

I'm convinced that this is the way.

A cleaner world.

There is a way forward
other than burning fossil fuels

out of our farms.

A greener world.

This wind farm is producing
more hours of power

into the grid than all wind farms in the UK

and probably in the world.

What we've done in the past

is not going to solve these challenges.

We need to find new ways
and I think the only way

to do that is to bravely step forward

and implement technology.

Together, they are pushing engineering

to its limits, to create
extraordinary machines

that can protect our planet for the future.

[soft music]

It may be the greatest
technological challenge

ever undertaken by humankind.

The quest to produce the
ultimate energy solution,

a reliable source of clean power.

Wind mills are great, solar
is great, but they don't work

when the wind's not blowing
or the sun is not shining.

So, what if we could create here on earth,

our very own version of a star,

a machine that makes
power from nuclear fuel?

[quick whooshing]

When fusion is working,
it will allow us to have

base load electricity,
replacing all coal gas stations

without producing any
greenhouse gas emissions.

The potential for fusion is massive.

So Fusion offers humanity
an unlimited source of energy.

But there are big challenges.

Most of those challenges

are actually engineering challenges.

It has taken 70 years

and a truly global effort, which has seen

science transcend the
boundaries of cold w*r politics

in a common goal, but so
immense are the challenges.

The goal of a power
producing fusion reactor

has so far remained
elusive and out of reach.

It's going to require the mastery

of extraordinary temperatures, the creation

of magnetic fields eclipsing
anything that has gone before,

and the ability to sustain
both for long periods of time.

For me, in terms of the
world's energy needs,

it's not a matter of if, but a
matter of when, for fusion.

For years, the attention of thousands

of scientists and
engineers across the globe

has been fixed on crucial
tests being conducted

at this former military air base in the UK.

[bright music]

The research being carried out here

is pushing the boundaries
of the science and technology

that underpins the whole
concept of a fusion reactor.

If successful, it has the
potential to change the world.

Every day is a daily
challenge and we are doing

first of a kind in the world.

So every day is an exciting
adventure on the way

to a very important goal
for the whole of humanity.

[upbeat music]

But these tests are just part

of a much bigger story.

For over a decade,
here in Provence, France,

an immense construction
project has been underway.

It's here, over the few short months,

that pieces of the most
complex technological jigsaw

ever created will be
assembled, costing $22 billion.

It'll be the most expensive
scientific experiment

in the history of mankind.

[speaking in foreign language]

It's name, ITER, the International

Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

Nothing of this size and scale

has ever been attempted before.

The 42 hectare platform is 400 meters wide

and covers an area
comparable to 60 football fields.

If successful, it will form a new blueprint

for the world's future energy production,

a giant machine that makes use of a process

of the subatomic scale, a
process which provides the energy

for the building blocks of life, fusion.

Everything that we see here
as a result of a supernova

of an ancient star and that ancient star

and that supernova process
occurred by the fusion reaction.

So as a scientist, I think it's fantastic

because we're developing and controlling

the very essence of the
building blocks of nature.

If you can get close enough to the sun,

to peer inside its core,
you'd see atoms of hydrogen

joining together or fusing,
releasing huge amounts of energy

in the process.

The source of energy within an atom comes

from what holds it together.

It's known as binding energy.

So if you want to break one apart,

you need a lot of energy to do it.

In the sun, because you have

this enormous gravitational field,

the hydrogen that's in
the sun is compressed

into a very high pressures and temperatures

to the point when they collide,

there's a significant
probability that they'll fuse,

they'll stick together,
they'll stick together in pairs

until you get helium.

The helium has slightly less binding energy

than the hydrogen did to begin with,

and that difference in energy is released.

It's released as heat
and energy of the products

and as light that we see
from the sun or the stars.

Every second, the sun consumes

about 600 million tons of hydrogen,

releasing half a million times more energy

than is consumed on
earth in an entire year.

The sun works because it's so big,

but it's incredibly inefficient.

A meter cubed of the
sun actually only produces



You and I actually produce more heat

than the sun does per cubic meter.

So the sun only works 'cause
it's absolutely enormous.

[calm music]

Harnessing the power of nuclear fusion

has often been referred
to as bottling a star,

but in reality, our version of fusion

will need to far exceed what a star can do.

[calm music]

The sun uses the lightest
elements, no hydrogen,

to fuse together.

If we actually use slightly
heavier versions of hydrogen

called deuterium and tritium, we can make

that process happen much more quickly,

much more effectively and
that is the process that we plan

to use on earth to actually
recreate those fusion reactions.

It's a good job, the sun
doesn't use those fields

because if it did, it would have burned out

in less than one second,
rather than the five

to 10 billion years lifetime
of the sun actually has.

Fusion is all about creating a superheated,

electrically charged gas, known as plasma.

To achieve this, you need
three things, temperature, time

and containment, all of
which create huge challenges.

Firstly, how do you create temperatures

of over 100 million degrees?

Secondly, how do you keep
the charge nuclei together

long enough for them to fuse?

And lastly, once you
have achieved the first two,

when creating plasma, how
do you contain the substance

that would instantly vaporize
any known material it touched?

The teams here at Culham and in France,

believe the solution lies in
a concept first conceived of

in the Soviet Union in the


[bright music]

So this is JET.

This is the joint European Torus.

It's a Tokamak, it's a device
that uses a magnetic field

to confine a plasma at
very high temperatures

in order to make nuclear fusion.

There's a system of magnets on JET.

One system wound around the Torus this way

and one system wound
around the Torus that way,

that keeps the plasma in the
center of the vacuum system,

away from the walls and allows
you to raise its temperature

to this 100 or 200 million degrees C.

It's donut shaped, it's toroidal
because the magnetic field

confines the plasma from moving across it,

but it has no confinement properties

along the magnetic field,

so you can't have ends in the field,

and the way you avoid having ends,

is you twist the magnetic
chamber into a torus.

If you go anywhere in the world

and you look at magnetic
confinement devices,

you'll see different kinds of donuts.

This one's called a Tokamak.

JET is a high vacuum system,
which we pump out at the start

of every experiment and then
we inject a small amount of gas

into the chamber of deuterium and tritium,

which are the two isotopes of hydrogen

we use to make fusion.

These are then ionized
using a very high electric field

that is generated around the Tokamak.

Once they're ionized,
they conduct electricity

and the currents inside there

are up to about 4 million amps.

At those very high
currents, you heat the gas

and turn it into a plasma.

So we've electrically charged

and heated the gas to create
plasma, but at this stage,

it's a mere 10 million degrees
Celsius, which might work

for the sun, but without
the benefits of the sun's size

and gravitational field, it's
just a 10th of the temperature

needed to create energy
producing fusion here on earth.

So what do we do?

We add additional heat
systems for heating the plasma,

for boosting the temperature of the plasma

by another factor of 10 or so.

There are two such additional
heating systems on JET.

One is a resonance
system, a bit like a microwave

heating food in your kitchen.

This system inside
JET is capable of putting

eight to 10 million watts
of power into the plasma.

To give you some comparison,

that's something like


of the typical microwave oven.

The second additional heating system

is this large system here
where we inject very high energy,

neutral atoms into the plasma,
neutral, so they don't see

the magnetic field.

This system and its sister on
the other side of the machine

are capable of putting more
than 30 million watts into JET.

The combination of the two
heating systems lets us boost

the temperature up to those
we need in order to make fusion.

But the problem is that as large

and sophisticated as JET is,
creating the plasma requires

so much power that the
reactor doesn't actually generate

more power than is put into it.

Scientists often compare
it to lighting a fire.

You need a match to get it
started, but ultimately you need

that fire to keep itself going.

The problem is to create enough plasma

to keep the temperature up,

which is what is called burning plasma.

And that's where ITER comes in.

[bright music]

So ITER is the next step.

And so we're building
off of all the knowledge

of these existing machines to
be able to go to the next step

and where for every one watt we put in,

we would be able to pull out 10 Watts

from this fusion reaction.

This has never been done before.

We have excellent calculations
that have been validated

by experiments at the
level we can do to now,

but nobody's gone to the level the ITER

and a future power plant
for fusion would have to go to,

which is dominant self-heating.

And so that's one of the
really big physics challenges

that's exciting, is this
will be the first time we go

to the place where we
have a true burning plasma.

[calm music]

And that burning plasma
can be used to heat water

flowing through pipes,
which in turn can be used

to power turbines, just like

in a conventional power station.

Just 250 kilos of deuterium
and tritium could power

a million homes for a year.

To do the same thing,
a coal-burning station

would require 2.7 million tons of coal,

but while deuterium is readily
abundant and can be distilled

from seawater, tritium, a
vital part of this technological

jigsaw is a different matter.

Deuterium and tritium are
two different kinds of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the first element in the series

a in the elemental table, but it comes

in three different flavors,
protium which is the one

that is normal, more than


is protium, deuterium or heavy hydrogen

and tritium, which is heavier again.

Tritium is radioactive,
it decays with a half-life

of a little over 10 years,

so there isn't very much on earth.

In fact, the total world's
stockpile of tritium

is only around 20 kilograms,

mostly produced by
reprocessing spent nuclear fuel

from conventional fusion reactors.

So the way we get around
that is we're going to make

our own tritium.

We're going to put lithium into the blanket

of a fusion reactor.

The neutrons that are
produced by the fusion,

split the lithium and make tritium,

and that way, we make
more tritium than we burn,

we feed the tritium we've
made back into the reactor

and we have something that's
affectively using deuterium

and the lithium as a fuel.

Lithium, you can mine, it's
available on earth in deposits.

There's also lithium and
seawater because the deuterium

and the lithium could potentially
come from the seawater

everyone has access to.

This potential for a reactor

to effectively produce its own fuel

from such an abundant
source is just one more reason

why ITER is so important.

[upbeat music]

When completed, it will be the biggest

fusion reactor ever constructed.

Weighing 23,000 tons, it
will be three times heavier

than the Eiffel Tower.

And then there's the
magnets vital for containing

the burning plasma and
keeping its immense heat away

from the vessel walls,
each one of its 18 toroidal

magnetic field [indistinct]
will weigh the same

as a fully loaded Boeing 747.

Together with another six
circular magnets, 48 meters wide

and weighing up to


a force equivalent to twice the thrust

of the space shovel at takeoff.

[space shuttle engine roaring]

And all of this, in the quest to produce

and control large amounts of plasma.

It's hydrogen and when it
gets ionized into a plasma,

it's got a beautiful pink glow to it.

So you have this sort of pink aura

that's as you feel like
you're making a work of art

and a work of science at the same time.

[calm music]

To create the very powerful electromagnetic

fields needed to confine
the plasma, ITER's magnets

are like nothing ever produced before.

It's a process that started 30 years ago

and heading the magnets
division, is Neil Mitchell,

a man who's been
involved in that development

from the very start.

Well, [laughs] it's quite
personal because, I mean,

I've spent not any my career,
but my life on this project.

It's very satisfying to think,
oh yeah, we were sketching

that on pieces of papers


it looks what it looks like, yes.

I mean, it's amazing in
the last, well, particularly

this year, actually,
because really this year,

everything is arriving on site.

The type of electromagnets
Neil and his team

are using are known as super conductors.

These operate at
incredibly low temperatures

where the wires in them
have no electrical resistance,

meaning that once charged, the only power

the magnet consumes is
that needed to keep it cool.

The magnet system of ITER
has got quite a lot of energy

stored in it.

It's around 40 gigajoule, if a gigajoule

makes any sense to
you, it probably doesn't.

It'll certainly run several
kilowatts of power for a day

or two or three.

There's a lot of energy in the magnets,

but it's not being consumed.

You put it in it, it's
stored and the currents

just circulate forever for free.

One gigajoule represents the capacity

of about four long range electric cars.

So the magnet system within
ITER, stores the equivalent

of about 160 fully charged vehicles.

[bright music]

But who would make
these extraordinary devices?

Before ITER, the total global
production of superconductors

was only 20 tons a year.

ITER's magnet system will
weigh almost 10,000 tons.

The superconducting magnets for ITER

are particularly challenging.

I've been working 30 years magnet industry

across the world, but I have
to say the ITER magnets

are by far the most complex
I've been working on.

But it's not just their complexity,

their sheer size meant that those companies

that did produce them,
wouldn't be able to transport them

on an existing roads.

So you need to have a
factory very close to the sea.

Which is easier said than done.

For [indistinct] in
Italy, in order to secure

the ideal location, they
had to take over premises

already occupied by a company

producing dishwashing machines.

But in the deal, there was the agreement

that they had to absorb, to take on board

most of the older workforce.

Now the workers are at the cutting edge

of a technology that
has multiple applications

from CT scanners to
Maglev high-speed railways.

They trained first these people

and then started working together.

And I have to say that after two years,

I have a team of very
motivated and skilled technician.

I think, and a very important
factor is the motivation.

And I think to participate to a project

for which the final
goal is to produce clean

and renewable energy
and hopefully save the future

of the planet, and I think
this is part of the reason

why they were able to so
quickly to bring up to speed.

Each of the 18 toroidal magnets

contains almost five
kilometers of conduction coil,

each themselves containing


niobium tin and copper strands.

It has to be wound into
a spiral with an accuracy

akin to the thickness of a human hair.



seals it into a casing.

Wrapped, insulated, then
vacuum-sealed in resin,

these magnets also contain cooling pipes

through which liquid helium will flow.

The magnets will need to be
kept cold for years at a time,

and the temperature that will be required

is -269 degrees Celsius, just four degrees

above absolute zero,

the lowest temperature physically possible.

When the reactor is
operational, in the center,

it will be the hottest
place in the solar system

and just a few feet away,
it will be two degrees

above the lowest
temperature in the universe,

which occurs in the Boomerang Nebula,

some 5,000 light years away.

To attain such low temperatures

is beyond any existing capacity.

So they're having to
construct the world's largest

helium refrigeration
unit, but to keep the cold

from dissipating, the
scientists then needed

to find a way of insulating the reactor.

The answer, a giant vacuum flask,

built from three enormous
stainless steel sections

known as a cryostat.

[bright music]

So we are now in the Cryostat workshop.

And so what you see here is the workshop

where we are building the
largest fridge ever constructed.

[loud sizzling]

So we are now entering sort
of crowding mind your head,

it says, into the
cryostat, the upper center

and it's here where you
can feel, see and sense.

The dimension of our machine
is gonna be 30 meters wide,



This is just the upper third,

and yeah, it's gonna be a big beast.

It's easy to look at the challenges

that ITER faces and
assume they're all to do

with science and engineering.

But this project involves
thirty-five different nations

representing over half
of the world's population.

On such a long-term project,
governments will come and go.

So how do you ensure that new leaders,

often with a very
different agenda and ideas

on what they should be
investing their money in,

remain committed to the fusion dream?

It has been estimated, one
giant company doing all this

by itself could get
things done a lot quicker,

but that misses the point
of what all this is about,

giving everyone a vested interest.

Why do we have 35 nations?

We always keep saying
ITER has two main goals,

one is to build this machine,
ITER, and to prove that,

yes, we can do fusion,
we can generate energy

by fusing atoms, this is the main one goal,

but at the same time, we
have all these nations on board,

so we are building up,
developing a fusion industry

around the world.

So ITER is really the focus point of all

of this research pointing
to one machine, ITER,

and then from that one
machine, all the countries

can go off and build their
independent machines.

[calm music]

The person charged with
coordinating the production

of all these different
components is Colette Ricketts,

who previously spent 18
years working as a physicist

with the team at Culham.

So for me, the hardest
thing on this project

with millions of components
coming from literally

across the globe, the
challenge is always, always

about, how do we communicate?

Can you imagine on a
schedule that's a quarter

of a million activities and
masses, how many issues

are faced every day, every day.

Of all of that, what's key?

What matters?

And then to pick five things, 15 things,

absolute maximum to share with the project

and say, we have to solve that problem.

Simplifying what is
effectively the world's largest,

most complicated construction project today

into human understandable elements,

but I have no doubt that
people here can solve

whatever is thrown at them.

They really know their stuff.

[bright music]

In an environment

where so many different
people from around the world,

speaking numerous different languages,

are working together to push
the boundaries of science,

one thing in particular
has turned out to be

of surprising importance

in helping communication, the canteen.

The idea of just sitting down to eat,

just gently getting on with conversation,

which is exactly how the
languages were designed to be used,

they were never designed
to be used in the classroom.

They were designed to
be picked up gradually

by people saying, "Can you pass me that?"

"Can you pass me that?"

"I like this."

Using the same simple
phrases over and over again,

we get people to join in, to ask questions

when they don't understand something.

Conversation is different.

You get expressions, you understand better.

In French, then you also, in your language.

Coming to work at ITER
is like coming to visit

all the countries in the world.

The countries in the world
have come to visit me.

It's a very easy way to
travel and they might be called

lunches in English, but of course,

the ideas that are being
expressed are coming from Chinese,

from Japanese, from all
the different nationalities

who are sitting around the table.

So I'm learning new things.

[upbeat music]

Although what is happening at ITER

represents the cutting edge
of the world's technology,

the concept of fusion
was actually first realized

a century ago, when in 1920
British astrophysicist author,

Eddington, suggested that
stars draw their apparent

endless energy from the
fusion of hydrogen into helium.

In 1934, New Zealand, born
physicist, Ernest Rutherford,

known for his work, splitting the atom,

managed to achieve fusion
in a now famous experiment

that identified the potential
of deuterium and tritium.

So if you look throughout
the history of fusion,

fusion has gone through ups and downs.

For example, back when the
scientists were first looking up

at the sun to understand what the sun is

and how does it work,
there was a huge enthusiasm

to be able to master
the reaction to the sun.

And soon, we realized
it was complicated then.

[thunder roaring]

And this has been sequenced to the 1950s,

where we came up with this
idea of magnetic confinement

and then there was an enthusiasm,

and there was dropdown again.

Once its perfected,
fusion power will give us

an unlimited supply of energy.

If we learned to perfect it,

but even the most optimistic scientists

think that fusion power

may not be developed
for 50 years, if then, if ever.

By the early 1960s,

the Fusion Research
Community was in the [indistinct],

many initially promising experimental paths

had all failed to produce useful results

and political will and support
was beginning to wane.

But in 1968, something remarkable happened.

The Russian scientists came
up with a major breakthrough

and that major breakthrough
was the Tokamak.

[bright music]

It was at least 10 times

what the best machines,
anywhere else in the world

had been able to do.

The results were so good
that some dismissed them

as down to faulty measurements.

So what they did was to
invite a team of scientists

from the UK who had been
developing their own reactor

on very similar lines,
to independently test

the Russian machines.

At that point, not only
did the Tokamak give birth

on an international scale,
but that was also the birthplace

of an open collaboration.

So this was really the
hot point of the cold w*r

and Russia said, "Hey,
look, we have this result."

and all the world flocked to
Russia and then from there,

the Russians shared their experience,

and at that time it was complete
open and positive exchange.

And that's what I think
is cool about fusion,

is fusion has no boundaries.

One other event, which
was a landmark moment

in the history of fusion,
occurred in November, 1985.

While in the midst of Cold w*r tensions,

President Gorbachev
and President Reagan met

for the first time at the
famous Geneva summit.

These two sat down and
wanted to find out a way

to move forward in a peaceful way,

and one of the outcomes
was a Gorbachev and Reagan

decided, let's join forces
and build a joint machine,

an international machine
that would try to solve fusion.

And thanks to that today,
we have ITER being built.

Over the years, that
international cooperation

has been well and truly put to the test,

no, where more so than in the building

of the vacuum vessel,

the very heart of the
reactor, which will enclose

the burning plasma.

It's made from nine gigantic segments,

five made in Europe and four in Korea.

Incorporating a double
lair of nuclear grade steel,

each segment weighs 500
tons, over twice the weight

of a box car locomotive.

[upbeat music]

Despite their enormous size,

they require millimeter precision.

With so many companies involved

in numerous different
countries, every aspect of ITER

is an extraordinary exercise
in planning and logistics.

As almost half of all the
components for the reactor

are being provided by
Europe, it was decided

to set up a separate organization
called Fusion for Energy,

to enable a myriad of European
companies to work together

and find new production processes to create

this one of a kind engineering marvel.

Some of the things I like about fusion

is that they're just mind boggling.

And even though I do this
for a day-to-day type event,

I heat plasmas, it's to some
degree inconceivable to me

that I can heat a plasma
to 115 million degrees.

Although the main body of plasma

created in this fusion process is contained

within a magnetic cage,
neutrons are also released.

On the one hand, that's
good because they provide

the heat energy, but
as their name suggests,

they are neutral charged,
so they can't be controlled

by a magnet.

They move at incredible speed.

If nothing blocked their path,
they would reach the moon

in just eight seconds.

When the neutrons
hit the wall of the vessel

that surrounds the plasma,
they can over time cause damage.

So whilst building work began in France,

it was vital that the team
working with the JET reactor

in the UK, came up with a solution.

[upbeat music]

This is a photo of the
inside of JET, about half size,

it's twice the size in reality.

And it gives you a good
idea of what the inner skin

of the reactor looks like.

For a long time, all of
these tiles on the inside

of the reactor were made out of carbon.

The reason we did that, is because carbon

is very forgiving material and when you're

an experimental device and
you want to push the limits

of the experimental
device, we could overheat

the carbon and the
tile didn't change shape.

The problem with carbon is that it reacts

with the hydrogen, it reacts
with the deuterium and tritium

that is in the plasma that are your fuel.

And it reacts in such a
way that it locks the fuel up

inside the machine.

So what do you do?

You change from carbon to metals.

But getting metals into the reactor

to test proved a challenge in itself.

Because of low level radioactivity

and the need to keep
impurities out, they needed

to find a way of working inside the chamber

without actually entering.

We are in the JET
remote handling controller.

This is where we maintain
the inside of the reactor vessel.

We need it because JET is
the only machine in the world

that uses the fusion
fuels, and therefore it has

an activation level inside the machine.

So when we talk about,
you're not allowed to go in there,

we're talking about radiation
levels that are comparable

to what you get for
walking around for a year.

We're trying not to increase
the dose of any of our workers,

significantly above what
the background limit us.

Or like a lot of JET, it's
all one-off, it's all been built

from the ground up.

It's taken 20, 30 years to develop this.

It started off with
technology that came to us

from the high energy physics community,

but it has developed all
out of recognition since then.

It's incredibly sensitive,
it's possible to do things

like start to screw in a volt,
feel that is cross threaded,

back it out again, put it
in straight with this tool.

It's possible to feel the
edge of a piece of paper,

that sort of a step,
it's very, very sensitive.

Everything is rehearsed
in our training facility

before it's done inside the machine

and it takes months if not
years, to get to the point

where you're a fully trained
operator on this system.

This highly precise remote handling system

meant they were able to
remove and analyze samples

from the wall of the chamber, no bigger

than the point of a pit.

After much research and testing,
they decided on two metals.

The first was really beryllium,

a very light unreactive metal used to make,

among other things, missiles and aircraft.

Beryllium, we use in the main chamber

because it's next to the high
temperature fusion plasma.

Here, we have the 200
million degrees that you need

in order to make fusion happen.

As powerful as the magnets
are in JET that make this cage

that keeps the plasma away from the wall,

there's always some leakage
and in a Tokamak in JET,

we arrange it so that those
losses are diverted down

to the bottom of the machine.

Here, they use tungsten,

which although slightly more prone to react

with hydrogen than beryllium,
is one of the toughest metals

found on earth.

In the bottom of the machine,
the plasma is much colder,

it's only 20 or 30,000 degrees.

At those sorts of temperatures,

with a high melting point
material like tungsten,

the plasma can touch the wall.

But changing the lining
of the vacuum chamber

was no small feat.

It meant replacing 4,000 tiles,

all of which had to be done remotely.

The knowledge gained
here at Culham has meant

that ITER's remote handling simulator

has already been built,
meaning trained operators

will be ready to go as soon as the reactor

is fully assembled.

Whilst a huge international
effort has been going

into building a viable energy
producing Tokamak by 20,025,

that are some in the scientific community

who believe we should be pursuing

a very different route to fusion.

In the 1970s, scientists
began experimenting

with powerful laser beams to heat a sphere

containing hydrogen isotopes to the point

where they would implode with enough force

for the hydrogen atoms to fuse.

Here's how it works.

An ultra high-powered
laser would fire its light beam

at very small pellet
dropped into a target chain.

The pallet would be hit from
all sides at the same time,

its outer layers vaporizing
away, the inner core compressed.

This implosion mimics

the huge gravitational force that stars use

to create then contain the fusion process.

It's called inertial confinement fusion.

[quick whoosh]

But as with everything to do with fusion,

life is never that simple.

To momentarily implode
hydrogen pellets smaller

than a sugar cube, requires
a laser that is 10 storeys high

and covers an area, twice
the size of a football pitch,

but the inertial confinement
story doesn't end there.

[gentle music]

So this is a p*stol shrimp,
and if you're wondering

what this has got to do with fusion power,

then that's a very good question.

Nicholas is co-founder

of a company called First Light Fusion,

who was inspired by a small,
but remarkable crustacean,

to look at creating
inertial confinement fusion

in a way that requires only a tiny fraction

of the energy of a giant laser.

The p*stol shrimp snaps
its claws so quickly,

that it creates a sonic
shockwave that can stop

or even k*ll its prey.

The speed of its snapping
joules creates a gas bubble

that collapses in on itself.

As this cavity implodes,
the add on vapor inside

is heated to such an extent that a plasma

is momentarily formed,
which has been estimated

to have a temperature close to that found

on the surface of the sun.

It's the only known example in nature

of internally confined plasma,
other than a supernova.

With the shrimp, the
plasma is whatever it happens

to be in the bubble, which is a bit of gas,

and a bit of water vapor, or so.

For us to make this into a
scheme for fusion power,

inside the bubble, you
put deuterium and tritium

and it's the deuterium and
tritium which are getting heated

by that collapsed process,
instead of kicking the claw,

what we use is high velocity projectile.

And So this is what
our targets look like now.

So this is our replacement for the bubble

that the shrimp creates.

If you look at one of our simulations,

this is the simplest possible one,

just one bubble by itself.

You can see there's a
huge amount happening,

but one of the key things
is the pressure wave

which is moving in.

When it hits the top of the bubble,

it causes it to turn inside
out and it forms a JET

which moves across the
bubble and then hits the back wall

with the bubble.

The key thing is that actually that JET

moves faster than projectile.

It compresses the fuel inside,
the deuterium and tritium

and for a tiny fraction of a second,

gets to enormous temperature and density.

And it will give a pulse of energy out,

pulse of neutrons out and
each one of these targets

will release about the
same amount of energy

as a entire barrel of oil,

and that's how the power plant works,

is you put one of these
into the power plant,

you hit it with the projectile,
it produces some energy,

you have to capture that energy,

and then you have to do
it again, at some frequency

and that's how you get power out.

[bright music]

Having originally
experimented with a gas g*n,

they found that although they could launch

a small projectile at


it just wasn't fast enough.

So they moved on to
electromagnetic launches,

which use a huge pulse of energy.

[calm music]

Okay, so this is a machine three,

our latest pulse power machine,
an electromagnetic launcher.

In here, we've got 192 capacitors.

We charge these up to 100,000 volts

and when they're fully charged, we've got

two and a half mega joules
of stored electrical energy.

Which means that this machine

has the ability to generate an incredible



Okay, so it's much easier to get a feel

from three from up here.

We've got the six limbs,
the six banks of capacitors

arranged around the outside.

When the switch is closed,
the current flows down

each of these limbs and
into the center section.

So what you can see here
is our vacuum chamber,

which has just been assembled.

It'll have a lid on it, it'll
be sealed and within that

is where our load section goes,

where all of this power converges.

The load is this circular disc here,

where the 14 million amps flowing,

they converge in this very
centerpiece down the middle here,

and in there, there's a very
small desk which bursts free.

It's machined out of one
piece, it's right at the bottom

of that sort of chimney section,

and that's where the current's flowing

and that piece breaks free
and it flies up that chimney

and that's where it hits our target.

So the real challenge is getting the energy

into the load as quickly as possible

and to achieve that, we
have to close the switches

in tens of nanoseconds,
that's billions of a second.

Once the switches are
closed and we're discharging

the whole machine in one
and a half microseconds,

and for that instance, the
power in the load is greater

than the US national grid.

And so the projectile can reach speeds

up to 20 kilometers per second.

And to give you an idea of that,

it would be London to New
York in about four minutes.

So it's really moving
when it gets to the top

of that chimney.

At a pilot will pass out around nine G,

this is experienced in around a billion G.

But as impressive as
the projectile mechanism

is, the main focus of the
team is to create the optimum

interior of the small target.

This means experimenting
with different sizes and numbers

of bubbles, which all
interact with each other

to amplify the shockwave.

The benefit of our approach
is the rest of the power plant

is so much simpler.

It's nearly all the existing
technology, in fact.

So if we can make this work,
we have a much simpler pathway

to fusion power, which is what matters.

[upbeat music]

Okay.

[indistinct] time.

Check set voltage and current.

[indistinct]

[indistinct] open.

HB on.

[indistinct] 70 AB.

Ten [indistinct].

Diagnostics.



Approaching full charge.

HB off.

[indistinct]

[loud bang]

[indistinct]

As the lid of the vacuum vessel is removed,

the evidence of the huge
albeit fleeting creation of energy

is immediately apparent.

But while this machine
is a good way of testing

individual fuel cells, a
working power plant would need

to provide a constant
stream of such energy pulses.

Our current thinking for, let's say,

repeating this process of
impact between projectile

and target is to inject
the target potentially

only by gravity down a
tube, and then that target

would be chased by a projectile,

which has much, much higher velocity.

For the projectile, the
target is as if it was stationary.

In fact, you need to imagine
this event being repeated

every 20, 30, 40 seconds.

And basically, every
time there is an event,

you get a burst of energy.

In order to convert
fusion energy into heat,

you need a device called the blanket.

In our reactor concept, those
blankets are falling curtains

of liquid lithium, which served
multiple purposes, in fact.

One is to convert the
fusion energy into heat,

which can then spin a
turbine and generate electricity,

but the reason why it's lithium
is also because that allows

us to breathe or to produce the tritium

that we actually then have
to feed back in the process

because it's one of our
components of the fuel.

Fusion can be done
and it, and it will be done

and it can be done in time
to solve climate change,

but if we're gonna get to net zero in 2050,

we need 10 plants on the grids in 2040.

To get 10 plants from the grid in 2040,

we need one plant in 2030.

To get one plant in 2030, we
need to prove the physics works

in the 2020s, in this decade.

And we can get there.

Even the big mainstream
products can get there.

It's always gonna have
first plasma in 2025,

but in principle, they
can do it and get that.

And that's the timetable we have to hit.

It is possible, it's gonna happen.

[bright music]

Back at the ITER, after
a decade in the making,

the large components
are due to start arriving

from all over the world.

But in all the years of
planning, there is one thing

that even the brightest
minds in the business

have not anticipated, a world in lockdown.

For Alain Becoulet, the Head of Engineering

and the man charged with
overseeing the assembly process,

it was just one more challenge
in a long line of challenges.

But how did ITER cope with the COVID-19?

It's a really a moment
when we have discovered

new other ways of
working and we very likely

will take lessons out of that.

So the number of people
working on the construction side

was cut by one third,
but we still could carry on

the main activities.

On the Engineering, Corporate
Science and Operations side,

everybody went home,
everybody worked from home

and people carried on
designing and working from home.

In a sense, we are used to it
because the ITER Organization

is spread around the world, so
we are used to work remotely.

And as I said, we are now
taking lessons also out of that

and trying to create
what we are calling now,

the new normal, because in a way it works.

[bright music]

If visible proof were needed,

that progress is being made,

it doesn't come much bigger than this,

the three massive sections
that make up the cryostat

have been completed.

The base alone weighs 1,250 tons,

but building a reactor
out of such huge sections

created yet another technical challenge.

How do you first move
them, then assemble them

in their final resting
place in the reactor hole?

This unprecedented problem
required unprecedented solution.

A vast assembly hall has been created

next to the reactor building,
within it to newly installed

cranes, able to lift 1,500
tons, will carefully carry

each unique and precious
component for what is known

as the Tokamak pit.

It's a hugely symbolic
moment as it represents

the start of the assembly process.

It's really the precision
that we want to have

all along the movements,
this element is huge plate

is moving in centimeter per centimeter.

It is crucial that the cryostat base

is positioned in exactly
at the right place,

around it, the rest of
the reactor components

will be assembled, components
which have been a decade

in the making, components
which have been designed

to be millimeter perfect
in order to fit together.

No ifs, no buts, it has to be right.

If we're not sure it's perfect,

we have to come back
immediately to this imperfection,

otherwise if we let
imperfections develops [laughs]

then at the end of the
day, for sure [indistinct]

It is the pizza tower, if you want.

If you don't pay attention
at the end of the day,

you have this, okay, we
want something that is perfect.

Having they arrived over

the Tokamak pit, it now
needs to be lowered.

It's a painstaking process which moves

at an almost glacial speed.

And there are controls all the time.

It's real-time controlled, the
position locations and so on.

If you are in front of it, you
almost don't see it move.

It's controlled millimeter per millimeter,

this is really impressive.

[calm music]

But with so much of the huge reactor

being constructed offsite, there are still

over 200 giant shipments,
some of which weigh

over 400 tons that need to
make the 100 kilometer journey

from the port.

However, when they did the calculations,

they realized there was
no routes that could cope

with the massive dimensions.

And so roads have been
widened, intersections changed,

and even part of a cliff removed.

To the question, are you
relieved when it comes?

Of course, but more than
relief, we are so happy.

[laughs]

Now this assembly can begin in earnest.

Although it will be five
years before the giant reactor

fires up, to the thousands
of scientists and engineers

around the world who
have been working on fusion

for over half a century, this is
acknowledged as a landmark

in the future of fusion energy.

I think for me, this is the
end of a very long road.

It's quite a matter of pride
that we actually managed

to do this, and it's all
come together and it's here.

But for COVID-19, today we'd have seen

a celebration attended
by the world's leaders

and huge international press coverage.

[scientists clapping]

But in some ways, the
small gathering of scientists

who have made it here
today, is far more apt.

They represent people
that have devoted a lifetime

in pursuit of this goal,
and they are keenly aware

that they are passing the fusion mantle

to the next generation.

Well, yes, I'd like to manage to keep going

for another five years
and actually turn it on

to check that it works.

It's an enormous
challenge for our generation

and for the generations to
come and I hope that people

will be excited about what
we're doing here at ITER,

support it, but also get
involved in themselves

and go into the engineering disciplines,

go into the scientific
disciplines that will be necessary

for that reality to be true for the planet.

[bright music]

I do feel like I've added a contribution

along with thousands
of scientists before me

and thousands and thousands
of scientists in the future

that we together have
provided an energy source.

Why do I do it?

I do it because I look at
my kids and I honestly,

I'm convinced that this
is the way, this is the way

to solve the future problems we have.

In addition to renewables,
yes, it's a combined energy mix,

but there's nothing else
on the table that offers

this amount of energy
benefit for such a low impact

on the environment.

I met some of the engineers
working on the Apollo project

when I was a kid and I thought,
"Wow, it must be really cool

to work on the Apollo project,
to put the man on the moon."

It's the same thing.

To me is it's just the
ability to say I helped

build this thing.

I helped humanity
overcome our energy crisis.

And that I just think is
like, wow, that is really cool.

[bright music]