Why Is Lockheed Building A Fusion Reactor? A Non-Nerd Explainer

Lockheed Martin just did the scientific equivalent of whipping it out and slapping it onto the table: They’ve promised to deliver a working fusion reactor within ten years. So, why the big promises, and more importantly, can Lockheed actually deliver?

What is fusion?

It’s the process of slamming two atoms of one element together really hard to make them an atom of the next element on the periodic table. In this case, it’s two hydrogen atoms and a helium atom. Essentially, it’s what the sun does on a daily basis.

Oh. That sounds hard.

Yeeeeeeep. Work on fusion reactors started in the ’50s, and we still haven’t cracked it, partially because a fusion reactor will heat up to, oh, about 200 million degrees, so you have to contain it with light or magnets. Although there have been some important breakthroughs, in that we’ve proven it’s possible and given a guy named Omar Hurricane the single best pick-up line in human history. Now it’s just a question of getting the reaction going and keeping it going.

So Lockheed Martin is making big promises?

Lockheed Martin has just basically announced they’re going to change the course of human history within a decade. Promises don’t get bigger than that.

Can they pull it off?

Good question. The basic physics work; Lockheed’s not reinventing the wheel there, they’re containing the reaction with magnetic fields. What’s different is that usually fusion reactors use a donut shape called a tokamak, and Lockheed is using what amounts to a tube with a powerful magnetic wall; the more the reaction pushes against the wall, the stronger the wall pushes back.

Also, there are a few challenges. Their reaction design generates the radioactive isotope tritium and some parts of their reactor will be radioactive, although not on the order of fissionable material.

And the timeline is ambitious; promising to do in ten years what the rest of the scientific community couldn’t do in 70 is either an announcement of confidence or utter hubris.

What happens if they do pull it off?

Their spec commercial unit could power 80,000 homes for a year off 50 pounds of fuel. Energy demand has risen dramatically over the last few years, and a fusion reaction would be self-fueling, self-sustaining, and draw more power out of it than you put into it. That would essentially end oil wars, crush pollution, and give us essentially limitless energy. So, yeah, things would change a little bit.

×