UF/UC Researchers Design Fusion Reactor To Power The Future

November 20, 1997

GAINESVILLE — Researchers at the University of Florida and University of California, Irvine, have designed a fusion reactor that will produce electricity twice as efficiently as a traditional coal-burning power plant and, unlike nuclear power plants, will involve no radioactive fuels or byproducts.

The Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor was designed by UF physics Professor Hendrik Monkhorst, UC physics Professor Norman Rostoker and UC researcher Michl Binderbauer. An article describing their work appears in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The fusion reactor will produce nuclear energy that can be easily transformed into electrical power. Monkhorst said the design could provide an alternative to burning fossil fuels and will not produce greenhouse gases that some scientists say could cause global warming.

The reactor will cost half as much to run annually as coal-burning power plants, he said, mainly because fuel is cheap and extreme safety measures are unnecessary since radioactivity is absent. It will require about 200 grams of boron to run a 100-megawatt reactor per day at a cost of a few dollars. “Fuel costs are negligible,” Monkhorst said. Energy in the form of electricity and helium gas are the only products of the reactor. If complications arise during operation, the reactor simply stops working.

“These reactors could replace all gas, coal and oil-fired power stations in the world,” Monkhorst said. “It is very safe and environmentally benign.”

The reactor will work like this: Beams of boron and hydrogen are sent into a reactor where magnets cause the beams to bend and move in a circular motion. This motion causes the nuclei to collide and fuse. The fusion creates particle energy that then can be converted directly into electrical power.

The conversion process will be twice as efficient as heat conversion, in which coal is burned to heat water and produce steam, which runs turbines that produce electrical power. The fusion reactor will convert nearly 90 percent of the energy it generates into electricity, compared with, at most, 40 percent for a traditional coal-burning power plant, Monkhorst said.

Many coal-burning and nuclear power plants are built miles from cities because of their size and environmental dangers. The electricity is brought into cities by long, high-powered transmission lines, which results in the loss of almost half of the generated electric power because of electrical resistance in the wires and radiation given off through electromagnetic waves. With the fusion reactor, the lines can be eliminated since the reactor can be placed near or within cities of any size. Local lines still will be needed.

The design also has advantages over nuclear power, said Monkhorst. Neither boron nor hydrogen is radioactive or emits neutrons. “In the fusion reaction that will be achieved within this reactor, there will be no neutron production to any significant extent, so it will be completely harmless to the equipment and to the person standing next to it,” Monkhorst said.

Nuclear power plants built in the 1950s and 60s must be closed down within the next 10 years when their operation licenses expire. A license typically is valid for 40 to 50 years. Monkhorst said the plants must be destroyed and buried because of extremely high levels of radioactivity within the structures. This fusion reactor will lack radiation damage and will not need to be shut down because of radioactivity overload.

Monkhorst envisions the world using the fusion reactors to power cities and to charge batteries of electric cars. A city the size of Gainesville — about 97,500 people — would require one or two 100-megawatt reactors; a few dozen could power a large metropolitan area such as New York City.

Monkhorst said a few experiments are needed to ensure the reactor will work properly and to design the prototype. Within 10 years, he said, a functional prototype then can be built at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee at an estimated cost of $70 million.