morris one two three four five six seven eight nine ten twenty three eighteen this hearing will now come to order i want to wish everyone a good morning and welcome them to our hearing on the next generation of fusion energy research before we get started we have congressman rush holt of new jersey with us in the committee today if there is no objection i would ask unanimous consent that he join us on the day after hearing no objection so ordered thank you for being here wherever here where is rush hour there is a rush come on up and we will begin today rush thank you for joining us will your expertise will be much appreciated on this committee along with that of dr elders fusion energy has successfully powered the sun and the stars for billions of years so it's no surprise that humankind has tried to recreate the harness this energy here on earth however we all know that a working fusion reactor has been much more difficult to achieve than our atomic age scientists initially expected over the years there were also some overly optimistic or even some cases fraudulent proclamations by folks who skipped the pe process and went straight to the media which has further complicated the popular and political assessment of the extent to which the federal government should continue to support this research that said however according to recent reviews by the national academies and the department of energy there have been significant developments in the fields of advanced computing engineering and plasma science over the last twenty years that have led to a far better understanding of how to create and control a fusion system because about three years the national ignition facility in california is expected to become the first fusion device in the world to produce more energy that it consumes but only for at most a handful of brief experiments per day and qataris france the large international fusion project called ether is also is about to begin construction this experiment is designed to produce five times more energy than it consumes for several consecutive hours and i think my children already do that however their four and a half years old and swear they put more energy out than they consume as well as ten times more for at least five hundred seconds that's the expectation at any rate if these new facilities are successful they will present a dramatic turning point in developing a viable commercial fusion reaction reactor big question still remains however such as how affordable fusion can be in comparison to other options that are known already to produce greater amounts of energy what the appropriate choices are for materials in a device which contains gases that can be hotter than the sun but the us fusion program needs to do all they can to ensure the successes and be ready to take advantage of them if and when they occur i look forward to learning more from this excellent panel of witnesses on how this program dominated long range energy thinking for many years but has had very little public successes to back up the standing that they had hoped to achieve and i hope sincerely hope that we can learn a lot more about fusion energy not only in this hearing but in the next five years and really be able to put it in its rightful place in the hierarchy of energy alternatives that we should be pursuing it's clear to us that we have to take a different approach in our society in terms of the generation and use of energy we know much of what we have to do to change or use so that we know a great deal about what we have to do to develop alternative methods of producing usable energy statements those statements will be added to the record and of course when that mr inglis arrives we will accept a statement as well at this point it's my pleasure to introduce our extraordinarily distinguished panel of of expert witnesses dr edmonson a koski is the director of the office of fusion energy science at the u s department of energy dr riccardo betty is the assistant director of academic affairs for the laboratory for laser energetics at the university of rochester dr raymond funk is professor of engineering physics at the university of wisconsin and i'll thank you for another very excellent hearing with an outstanding group of witnesses thank you all for coming and i'm pleased to have the opportunity to welcome to the subcommittee day and adopt a tennessean and the director of the oak ridge national lab dr tom mason of the lab and oakridge he's going to describe days critical role in managing the u s contribution to the reactor that they are an easterner c m e middle tennessee but mr davis represents many of the folks th chairman thank you for the work that you do on this committee and we in tennessee are certainly lucky i'm very proud of the constant is that you have been born and i represent an area that has and in the coming mountains and we are folks that are say they're proud to have in energy environment national security and computing as well as providing good jobs and performing educational outreach to our students we're lucky to have this critical scientific resource in a region that's such an accomplished with such in  at the at want twelve i realize that this earth of the world this area of america in this part of tennessee has been a valuable asset in scientific research and will continue under your leadership thank you for would now be happy to recognize our guest at the committee representative rush holt to introduce our last witness and mr hall be followed by dr elders who wishes to offer comments as well i thank the chair and i'm  pleased to be with you and my distinguished colleagues today and also with the distinguished panel in fact i've been asked to introduce dr prager but i could equally well spend time  introducing and praising doctors in a callous key dr funk all three of whom have been constituents in the twelfth congressional district in new jersey but more importantly all three of whom have been  leaders world leaders in advancing plasma physics and fusion sciences they all have contributed to what what we now see the promise of  fusion with the sensually unlimited globally available ingredients with great environmental attractiveness with no harmful emissions or high level radioactive waste or connection to proliferation of weapons materials and other words a technology we're undertaking they have they will be well prepared to address today how realistic and practical this may be i would  say at least possibly and i would go so far as to say probably the progress has been great by any measure exceeding predictions per certainly if you look at achievements per dollar spent  in power contained millions of watts in plasma sustained improvements by factors of hundreds of thousands to what amounts to an eternity and plasma lifetimes  development of an entire new field of science plasma physics with theoretical and practical contributions not just to materials and engineering and science but to daily lives the progress the promise the justification of spending taxpayer dollars significant taxpayer dollars have been recognized by domestic and international advisory committees in some cases on which our panelists have served or which they have chaired and also recognized by the actions of many other countries it's worth noting as we talk about the fusion energy program in the united states  that the united states was once for decades the world leader we could be again we should be again for all the reasons if we are it will be in part because of the work of some of these panelists dr prager has worked at a number of the places where this significant work has been done general atomics in san diego columbia university in new york  university of wisconsin for many years and he's chaired the fusion energy advisory committee he's chaired the division of plasma physics of the american physical society notice i spoke earlier of creating an entirely new field of science growing out of the work of lyman spitzer at princeton forty fifty years ago now he's dr prager also served as president of the university fusion association so he represented the large n view of the comments of the two gentleman from tennessee sitting on the d s here and specially to chairman mr gordon when he was making they were making their comments about courage it suddenly occurred to me it's been at least thirty years since i've been to oakridge it's been probably twenty since i've been to oregon and ten since i've been to fermi lab members of the committee should these are the crown jewels of a research effort and i think members of the committee should be visiting these laboratories more often so my plea to chairman gordon is perhaps we can start organizing cordle's where members of the committee can go visit the national labs on a rotating basis i think would be extremely beneficial for the members of the committee you know back here their visa problems for some of us to get into oakridge but i leave been joined by the ranking member mr inglis and i will recognize him first of all welcome question is how to make it work so looking forward to learning more from that from you so thank you mr chairman for holding a hearing one of the things i greatly respect about mr inglis is he recognizes when everybody said everything and he didn't have to say it again so  s rare quality in congress and with that we will proceed to our experts and that will begin the doctors in the galaxy thank you very much thank you mr chairman ranking member inglis and members of the committee i've been director of the federal fusion energy sciences program since june seventh of this year and i'm thrilled to join this office when the scientific readiness opportunity and urgency infusion are extraordinarily resonant the pursuit of fusion energy embraces the challenge of bringing the power of a starter  promise is enormous nearly limitless fuel supplies large scale energy production no greenhouse gas emissions we are entering a new age and fusion science during which our knowledge base will be put to the test as researchers will undertake a fundamental set of new studies of fusion energies viability at the heart of fusion energy in the stars and on earth is the world's most famous equation equals mc squared which describes the fundamental relationship between mass and energy the challenge of getting atomic nuclei of the fuel to bind together to form heavier elements releasing enormous quantities of energy in the process in the lab we use hydrogen isotopes as a fuel and i've had the privilege of being part of experiments that have generated millions of watts of fusion power the science underpinning much of fusion energy research is plasma physics and plasmas are hot gases the stuff of stars and over ninety nine percent of the visible universe lightning flames plasmas are routinely confined by magnetic fields and heated in laboratories diffusion conditions the tok russian invention from the one nine hundred sixty s is studied worldwide and as the leading candidate magnetic bottle for creating fusion energy dramatic progress prompted the national academy of sciences in two thousand and four to urge the us to take a landmark step and it should participate in a fusion experiment in which the plasma burns or generates more energy than is used to heat it externally and in large part heats itself in response the u s agreed to participate in either project to be built and caught a rash france we view either as a scientific instrument with the flexibility to reveal critical requirements for fusions optimization the seven members of eater are china the european union india japan russia south korea and the u s construction will take place over the next decade with burning thousand experiments slate to take place in the twenty twenty s the u s is committed to bringing a strong and effective approach to project management in eaters design and construction another approach to fusion is to compress the fuel extremely rapidly and to rely on its inertia to confine it long enough for fusion to occur this is being studied by the national nuclear security administration for stockpiles to a chip applications and a joint program to study this extraordinary state of matter is being forged between n s a in my office that will engage a broad array of laboratories and universities of this approach are being planned for the national ignition facility it's successful they will be historic the national academy of sciences has emphasized the importance of studying this plasma state to both energy research and to a richer way of scientific question eater success his chances with success in our prospects for deep scientific return are intimately interleave with a broad domestic research program in the future related sciences in the u s our multi institutional program an experiment in computation is rich in discovery an impact it is globally respected for its depth of accomplishment and scientific a static and has had a major impact on the meter design and research plan research is supported in thirty eight states at national labs private industry and about sixty universities u researchers participate in about seventy five joint international activities and about three hundred forty graduate students partake in fusion energy in general plasma science research strategic planning is underway aimed at filling gaps in the world so as to assert u s leadership  advances fusion as a whole while maximizing u s scientific return for magnetic fusion the scientific challenges can be broadly stated as follows first understanding optimizing the burning plasma state experiments theory and simulation has significantly advance or understanding of what to expect from a burning plaza and will continue to do so but either provides the only platform planned to directly test and expand our understanding of this complex to fix second understanding the requirements for extending the burning plasma state to long times days weeks and longer many aspects of his her pursuit in the us in the second ten years of eaters operation will put our understanding to a crucial test however overseas fusion programs are set to assert leadership in part through new billion dollar class research facilities in europe japan south korea and china we are growing exploring growing our collaboration's to increase their impact in the knowledge return and finally third advancing them to the material science for  enduring the harsh fusion plasma environment for extracting energy and for generating fusion fuel in situ we'll be exploring what is required to develop the materials in fusion nuclear science program one of their dresses the necessary fundamental scientific issues while leaving the results in advances into our best concepts future fusion systems thank you mr chairman for providing this opportunity to discuss a fusion under science program this concludes my testimony and i'll be pleased to answer any questions you may have as he said i'm director of the princeton class of physics laboratory which is a deal enough in the lab managed by princeton university dedicated to developing fusion energy there are two complementary approaches to fusion and one as you've heard powerful laser is compress tiny pellet of fuel releasing fusion energy in a flash the national ignition facility will tremendously advance the physics for this approach i'm here to discuss the approach known as magnetic fusion in which the large hot plasma is confined continuously by powerful men etic fields as you as i hear you already will recognize you at fusion energy is one of the most challenging physics and engineering quests ever undertaken it will be key to solving perhaps the most pressing problem confronting the world today the absence of sustainable measure sustainable energy by any metric we're far along the road to commercial fusion power in the past thirty years we've progressed from producing one watt of fusion power for one thousandth of a second to fifteen million watts for seconds and either a will produce five hundred million watts for ten minutes and longer driving this progress has been the development of an entirely new field of science called plasma physics outside reviews continuously laud the progress of fusion the most recent national academy studies study notes remarkable progress in recent years but my focus today is the future of the remainder of the journey to fusion power my comments are informed by the just completed study by the u fusion community commissioned by do we known as there in new report two hundred fusion scientists undertook this one year study that identifies the remaining scientific issues to resolve for fusion power the fusion system consist of the hot plasma core and the surrounding material structure we are ready to move forward on the two major challenges to better control the plasma and to develop new materials the two problems are coupled since the plasma and the material structure interact with each other our ability to control the hundred million degree plasma cores quite amazing yet we have more work to do to sustain the plasma indefinitely and controllability the sophistication of plasma science now offers new opportunities for example designs of minetta configurations are possible now that were nearly impossible even to conceive twenty years ago they are possible only with modern computers building upon the foundation of the mainline tocome back approach these designs produce plasmas that parts persist indefinitely and are so well controlled as to reduce the severity of the materials challenge it is crucial that we establish a research program in materials for fusion materials must be developed to withstand the intense heat that emerges from the plasma but full solution of the materials challenge ultimately requires study of materials in a true fusion environment with the intense flux of neutrons that are produced in the fusion reactions it is time to lay the groundwork for such a facility sometimes called the fusion nuclear science facility since it exposes materials to a nuclear fusion environment if this facility were designed somewhat more aggressively could possibly demonstrate net electricity production design studies are required to identify the wisest next step in these directions the princeton plans of physics lab aims to solve a broad range of fusion science challenges our core capabilities and pl physics enable us to attack crucial problems in the fusion plasma and then materials exposed to the intense plasma heat the major experiment our lab is lighting the physics basis for a fusion nuclear science facility is advancing fusion science broadly and is investigating novel material boundaries contributing to the design and fabrication of eater and are preparing for research and heater we hope to play a key roles in a fusion nuclear science facility which would not be located our at our laboratory and we are developing plans to realize experimentally at our laboratory the new study state approaches approaches to fusion energy that could prove so essential to the feasibility of fusion when i began my research career the us was the world leader in fusion with the best facilities arguably the most innovative program scientists from the world over flocked to our labs japan sent research teams to u s facilities  trade an alarming reversal of that flow of scientists is now under way the u s has not built a major new for the fusion facility in decades the rest of the world is seizing the opportunities major facilities more ambitious than anything in the u s or starting operation or under construction in china japan south korea germany and france our effort has dwindled to a fraction of that of europe and japan the time is right for the u s to reverse its slide opportunities such as we are discussing today a bound to restore the u s to world leadership and move us aggressively toward carbon free abundant fusion energy and i'll just close by inviting all members to please visit o laboratory which is a short train ride up the coast and with that thank you very much thank you dr mates mr chairman ranking member inglis and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today my name is tom mace and i'm the director of the department of energy's oak ridge national laboratory and unlike the other members of the panel i'm not an expert in fusion but as director of do ease largest multipurpose laboratory i oversee a broad program of energy related d that includes magnetic fusion and it is from that perspective that i see fusion research as an essential part of the nation's energy r and d portfolio you've heard how this is a promising source of energy that uses widely available fuel and produces no greenhouse gases or long live radioactive waste in fact one could say that the fuel for fusion is smart people and high end manufacturing and so from that point of view from the point of view of us competitiveness in the type of energy source that is wor seeking i think fusion is significant it's science and technology base is now mature enough to warrant a significant investment in determining our readiness to advance to prototype fusion reactor eater is an international project to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of huge an energy that is being built at cataracts in france by seven partners the united states russia the european union japan china south korea and india each partner's responsible for a share of the hardware personnel and cash contributions towards common expenses this international partnership presents an extraordinary number of technical and management challenges either will be twice the size of the largest existing fusion experiment it's a first of a kind experimental facility made up of a large number of complex systems provided by suppliers all over the world and they must be integrated into a device that can function under extremely demanding challenges the organization is also face the challenge of standing up and staffing a new multi national organization to provide coordination project management integration engineering while overseeing efforts to finalize the design and supervise construction catarrh given these challenges it's not surprising that there have been some see some te pains for example in the u s we've struggled to secure funding for eight or during some very tough budget years but now with the strong support provided by congress in fiscal year two thousand and nine for which we are very grateful we're on a sound footing today the eat organization has two or joint task completing the overall design in the stablish in realistic cost and schedule baselines the us fusion community is fully engaged in the execution of these tasks oakridge has hosted and led the u s either project office since two thousand and six we're responsible for all u s activities supporting either construction the estimated cost of these activities is between one point four and two point two billion dollars so this is a heavy responsibility and it's one that we take very seriously the office was located oak ridge to take advantage of project management expertise develop during this place a neutron source project which as you've heard was a one point four billion dollars neutron scattering facility that was designed and built by a partnership of six department of energy national laboratories was completed on scope on schedule and on budget in two thousand and six we're working with other national laboratories industry and universities to deliver the u s contributions to eater recently two contracts worth thirty four million dollars were awarded to u s companies one in waterbury connecticut and one in carter at new jersey the new jersey supplier has also received a contract from the european union's eater domestic agency this speaks well of the ability of u s companies to compete internationally for work supporting either more than one hundred sixty companies and universities in thirty three states have worked directly on the project and many others are interested in future procurements the us either team also provide substantial support to the international organization developing systems engineering procedures technical baseline documents project management plans and so forth as either proceeds through construction and operation oak ridge will continue to play substantial role in fusion in the us future project will remain a high priority w distinctive capabilities in materials r and d nuclear technology and high performance computing to advance fusion science technology and engineering one specific focus will be next generation fusion nuclear science facility to answer questions that lie outside of your scope our strengths at oakridge position is to lead the technical and programatic planning for this facility and we will work with the u s community to bring it into being at an appropriate pace either represents an opportunity for the d o b national laboratories u s universities and u s industry we're now position to make substantial contributions to eater and to reap the rewards it will provide in terms of increased scientific knowledge high tech jobs that will help us rebuild u s manufacturing capacity and training for fusion scientists and engineers who work on either to bring home what they learn a sustained investment in either is essential to realizing the benefits of this extraordinary effort we also need a vibrant domestic fusion program to take advantage of the knowledge gained from meter and to continue advancing toward commercial fusion power it's a major step forward either is a major step forward but will not answer all of our questions congresswoman zoe lofgren has introduced a bill calling for a comprehensive plan to identify the r and d facilities needed to ensure the realisation of practical fusion energy and this is a vital step in setting the direction of the us fusion program the bill also calls for investing in us capability in fusion engineering science that will naval us develop the materials and enabling technology needed to realize the full benefit of eater to take the next steps toward fusion demonstration facility sustained post support for fusion engineering science and facilities is central to successful development of this future energy source as we search for sustainable energy solutions we need a balanced r and d portfolio that includes both near improvements in energy efficiency renewables and fission along with electrification of our transportation sector and fusion as a source of clean safe and abundant baseload power is in the long term interest thank you again for the opportunity to testify a welcome your questions on this important topic achieving ignition and i gain does not imply that they cannot make attractive fusion energy is just around the corner major technological and engineering challenges who is to remain even after ignition before starting a major energy development systems they derive it is the most complex and expensive component of the power plant several drivers have been proposed lasers the most developed drivers other drivers would likely require longer to develop to say what our vision for the next ten to twenty years is and i thought about it and said the biggest vision is we should not have this hearing again in twenty years we should not be talking about fusion energy science but we should be talking at that point about fusion energy development and there's a crucial difference so to answer your question i will give you a example of a path we could take to pursue in the next ten to twenty years and to get in that direction well in spite of the scientific progress we've made it's no secret there's skepticism on the credibility or timeline of fusion energy but much of that can be traced to the fact of the full range of technical challenges is not being addressed these challenges are some of them have been mentioned demonstrating in exploring the burning plasma state creating predictable high performance continuous plasmas taming the plasma material interface and harnessing fusion power from the very energetic neutrons released in fusion addressing these four challenges would provide the knowledge base to establish the credibility of fusion as an energy source and motivated decision to establish a fusion energy development program there's been outstanding progress in fusion energy science it's been mentioned here already under the auspices of the department of energy most of this is focused on the properties of the extremely hot fuel or plasma required for fusion energy reactions to occur but it's very important and must be emphasized that fusion science is not just plasma physics from tears of fusion science research are moving to the critical issues the last two fusion challenges the plasma all interactions and harnessing fusion energy at the same time as the front years and moving our experimental facilities our aging our leading experiment is over twenty years old the next generation state of the art facilities and capabilities are being developed outside the us the fact that we have not positioned ourselves to leading addressing the first two challenges because of these aging facilities and we haven't built anything in twenty years puts us in a unique position however of being able to address more aggressively the last two challenges of the fusion challenge and emphasis on the complex process of occurring in the plasma material interfaces there integration with the systems that extract energy from the fusion system and the effects of the fast neutrons on those processes should be the focus of the domestic u s program in the air this program and either together will address most of the critical issues underlines the credibility of fusion energy just as importantly it starts the u s to bend on the path to benefit economically from its long term investments in fusion science research indeed the intellectual property rights that accrue from the development of fusion will concentrate in these areas not in the pleasant sciences directly so it's time to create a plan to put the us fusion program on a trajectory towards leadership in the next generation of fusion research to accommodate realistic budgets specific programs and facilities in our program and need to be re directed or completed to free resources for these new directions domestically the program should move to address the pending nuclear and energy related issues that fusion will present these scientific challenges will be addressed first in small scale studies materials studies computational modeling etc but this effort should culminate in a national integrated fusion nuclear science test facility as the central fusion research facility in the us it will provide the needed integrated test of our understanding of the coupled plasma wall energy conversion systems whatever form this facility takes the centerpiece experiment in the u s should be a deterrent training facility to access the full range of fusion nuclear issues the transition of the domestic program tonight recently strong focus focus on fusion nuclear sciences can be executed over the next decade or so concurrent with the construction and initial operational meter as either construction winds down the roll off of those funds could be applied to this new national facility to meet the new challenges pursuing this program would vault the u s program into leadership of critical areas crucial critical areas of the overall fusion challenge in the air or the research activities on either end this us program would arguably define the centers of gravity of fusion science and engineering development and will expedite the decision whether to develop a demonstration fusion reactor either s government or industry or some combination thereof so there is a pressing need for plans to evolve a world leading fusion nuclear science program under realistic budgets and be developed the technical case for an evolution of the program into a fusion energy development program as soon as it can to support developing those plans the plan of scientific missions and conceptual designs of requisite facilities to match those missions should begin immediately support of h r thirty one seventy seven the fusion engineering science and fusion energy pl evolved after results came from it would be valuable to have a disinterested expert panel outside the community evaluate the prospects for inertial fusion energy to inform and motivate any decision about moving forward to a new inertial fusion energy science program again thank you for the opportunity to address the committee i thank all the panelists for not only your testimony dave if you're very distinguished careers and your service to our country and scientists and i want to ask of a number of forward the hearing is in the context of a time when our country faces an eleven trillion dollar debt a one point four trillion dollar deficit over the last fiscal year that's our fiscal situation our energy situation is that we as i believe the evidence is compelling that we face global overheating and acidification of our oceans the pace at which we need to make significant cuts in c o two and other greenhouse gases  is much more rapid than any of the proposals currently moving through the congress and i think more ambitious than any other proposals in terms of our reduction of greenhouse gases that puts a budgetary constraint on a timeline constraint and so with that as context let me ask a series of questions so i can understand the sort of timeframe we're dealing with just first of all how would we speak of ignition which i understand is when more energy is put out than put it in layman's terms how what is the longest period of ignition achieved so far in any of our modelo these in times of time how much time today to actually know a plasma has ignited we have had if let's suppose we achieve ignition so the challenge i think is ignition one one significant is achieved this is not an easy thing and you folks have dedicated your careers and brilliant as you are to this and many others before you and i'm sure after so once we if if and when we actually achieve ignition that's that's a eureka moment in a way but it's not like all our problems are solved because now we've got more energy coming out but the challenge is capturing that energy you got to somehow capture understanding is that that and correct me if i'm wrong that this is not meant to be in any way pejoratively but basically the way we're going to actually capture that energy is a good old fashioned way of making water hot and turning turbans is that is that the model we're trainer talking but but so it's really important for this committee and i think for americans and taxpayers understand that just because we get ignition doesn't mean we can now expect over the next week we're going to turn the lights on with energy produced by by fusion energy rightly we've got to somehow then find a way to actually harness that energy and the current model is again through steam driven turbans right that dr betty yes but there are two aspects just major challenges the material science of what kind of material can contain these reactions and sustain the bombardment of the neutrons etc right and so and then so we've got some challenges ahead but dr edgar i think you're exactly correct in a lot of the suggestions you've been hearing from the panel members get exactly at the questions you're pointing out need to be resolved how harness is the fusion power is sometimes the expression used so there are ideas to set up a research program to deal exactly with that question in addition to the remaining physics questions ok then there's the next question ok so let's suppose theoretically we can do it lee we solve the physics problem we demonstrate that ignition is possible we contain it with a magnetic  one is talking about electricity too cheap to meter i think everyone has learned a lesson that you shouldn't confuse fuel cost with what things actually cost fusion will be a fuel source that is dominated by capital costs because there is no ongoing substantial fuel cost and of course capital costs have to do with financing models and lifetimes and things that go well beyond the realm of physics and engineering but if you look at the  scale of plants that are being contemplated and the complexity of them it's i would say it's not fundamentally different than the kind of cost model you see associated with with  handle and that's why things like the loan guarantee programs and so forth are very important and so i think with the right sort of policy framework it can be very cost competitive understanding the things like the  programs that are in place now that are hopefully going to get us going with new starts confusion are likely models that would have to be explored particularly at the outset when the risk is much  higher which leads to the question you know for me one of the challenges we face is we have this imminent problem of global overheating and ocean acidification we have this tremendous budget debt and deficit right now and we have alternative technologies that today you can buy off the shelf that produce net energy output with the existing fusion energy thing called the sun at a known kilowatt per hour generation  that if you invest x you know with money being felt both finite and fungible if we invest x amount of dollars now we can lower our carbon output etc and and so the i think it's just really important for us to understand that the wind of this i've been talking costs and how and stop the when seems to me to be a good bit down the road when by when when i mean when we could actually generate significant replacement of existing energy sources i'd be shocked if any of you say any less than twenty years and i guess it's more like fifty i may be wrong i lose a bit when i talked about the portfolio of energy choices and i would kind of divided into three categories in the very near term most fruitful sorts of investments we can make are in energy efficiency there's a lot of things that we know how to do that can immediately reduce demand and the cheapest form of energy is the energy you don't need in fact most of the energy efficiency steps which represent about a third of what you need to achieve the types of c o two emissions goals that people are talking about cost you a negative amount of money in other words you save money by doing it and so there's no question in the very near term that is the low hanging fruit that we need to go after aggressively things like renewables wind and solar are we we know we can make them work but they're not yet cost effective although there's a lot of promising research directions that will improve that and scale up will bring down the car yes but they are intermittent and so certainly when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing we will want to be harnessing that energy and the environmental benefit that goes with it but it is not a base load generating capacity we do need base load capacity that we know will be on when people switch a switch on the light switch and while ours to buffer the intermittent renewable and and fusion has the possibility to offer a base load generating capacity that does not have a fuel constraint right now most of our base load capacity comes from coal and in terms of timeline and risk i would say our chances of being able to sequester c o two from coldfire plants at the scale we need to is not greatly different from the challenge we face in fusion i don't dispute that and we can't be sure that either one will dr mason's assessment that fusion is in the league of fish in terms of the capital cost in the involvement that we'd have and is that you agree with that i would one of the guiding principles almost too much so of the fusion program over the decades has been economic attractiveness that has guided the kinds of plasmas we've tried to produce and set goals for us throughout the years there been many many systems studies of fusion systems in the future that is the best can be done that says if the cost and the cost of electricity comes out to be competitive there's a big however those studies assume certain success in physics and technology so assuming that the physics and the techno ology research missions are accomplished then they calculate that the costs are competitive so i think what dr mason says has been backed up by studies another ballpark of a fission kind of investment when we go to fusion if we make electricity that way i'll just back up what dr preggers have been a lot of studies and answer is generally yes these are large power plants these are multi gigawatt power plants typically to get the most efficiency out and so you're in that bar park in terms of the scale of the plant course the issues are different vision and fusion are quite different so the radioactive materials and the things you have to worry about are quite different but the magnitude of the plant is about the same make sure i understand that what is what is the difference in terms of that radioactivity in that well fusion works with just tritium is just gashes fuel there's not a lot on the plant in the radioactive waste you produce and fusion is mainly the structure that holds the plasma there's no long term highly radioactive waste that you get in a fission plant now the fission people have ways to if we ever get there to transmute those ways and that but at the moment you look at very long term hundreds of thousands of years kind of waste fusion doesn't have that it has essentially short lived hundreds of years you can imagine in a generation or danger of catastrophic failure of the fusion plant the plasma state is essentially quite fragile if anything happens you get a leak in the chamber or something like that the system just extinguishes itself so  it's quite safe passively safe if she well the other thing of course it can be anywhere it's a base load up or base load energy source i think to back up with dr mason said if you look into the future not myself but energy experts you only see two or three baseload possibilities in the future and it's fusion fission if you want to be carbon free of course and possibly solar with storage but that's a very hard proposition anybody else  i would offer is as a attribute a fusion that i think we in the us should find attractive the comment that i made about in one you know we talked about the fuel but another way to look at what the fuel is for fusion is that it's its intellectual property and high  manufacturing the fuel is not something that you import from the middle east it's not something that you run out of and it's actually the essence of of what our economy is built around which is which is smart people and competitive industry and so not only as a domestic supply of energy but as a possibly significant export market if we can position our industry to lead in this field there would be i think economic value for the u s just getting into maybe a softer reason since the fuel comes from the oceans water and that should be accessible to all nations  and you might speculate that the conflict over natural resources for energy would be between nations would be decreased with fusion driving the energy sector so that's another reason i mean it's interesting when when  most of us enter the field what drew us in terms of the application was that we were running out of energy in the seventy's we were running out of energy there were gas lines and if you crisis and now perhaps the really what what drives it the dominant reason probably is  no contribution to global climate change so fusion somehow is almost the ideal and the dominant dominating reason maybe just changes with the times as the problems that we confront become more we are treading very tenderly and some treacherous waters with the current energy policies and i really suspect that far too many people who should know that don't know it and i'm not just talking about gas lines i'm talking about the the the whip other nations can hold over our nation just because we do not have the energy resources that we would like to have and it continues to concern me and last conversation to get into both inside and outside the congress people say oh well that's you know we have this new these new source of natural gas you know in pennsylvania we can get these this new gas we're all set for years and years and years  yes we're set for years but not years and years and this inability to deal with the reality is it's just fascinating to me that people just assume that somehow the scientists the physicists the engineers will find a way out of the shortages and i have taken the absent part of you i've often said that natural gas is too valuable to burn it's an incredibly useful feedstock for the petrochemical industry i don't know of anyone that's going to be as  easy and cheap to use and we're burning it so there's there's a multitude of ideas of issues here not just energy issues but resource issues security issues etc and i don't think that we as a nation are confronting them as as adequately as we should having said that i do wonder if i'm just asking questions  that's a great and deep question we i think we have many elements of the solutions to both questions in hand the much more mature understanding of the perspective how are we going to contain the plasma and control it  science here to the plasma you can imagine if you imagine a donut shaped magnetic field this is the heart of magnetic fusion where the plows one which is charged particles ions and electrons they do a very good job of moving field what you're trying to do with that magnetic field is confine it for long enough so that you can heat it long readily to get up to fusion conditions where the plasma pressure is such that the diffusion between the nuclei takes place what has happened as the us has really turned towards the science of the plasma i think has been a tremendous set up advances in understanding the basic physics for how that plasma is confined in this magnetic bottle what  apply to the plasma to optimize the confinement and i want to points one this is a very deep intellectual exercise which is worthy of investment to obtain u s capital is a great scientific challenges but they're not  challenges they're the best kind and they're the ones that are directed towards a purpose because the answers that we are finding with respect to the science for example of optimizing the confinement in this magnetic field which enables one perhaps to make a fusion reactor smaller which enables then for a future vision of a fusion reactor to be more economically attractive the science is intimately linked to to the to the final product and so i think for those who are interested frontier resides in crossing that bridge from that magnetic bottle to boiling the water and generating the steam and that is the material science question and the challenge of harnessing the fusion power and just as a footnote to all of this a significant alternate approach that has been mentioned especially by dr betty is that of inertial fusion is a fundamentally different process where you take a small pellet a fusion fuel there are no magnetic fields in most versions of the of the vision similar both of them again represent very deep scientific challenges but again i think that the best kind of scientific challenges because they have direct bearing on the output of the attractiveness i think you could maybe add a little bit about the materials because i think that is  a very important aspect is is how you transition from the environment where fusion is happening whatever form of containment you have in the environment where you're holding a vacuum and boiling water and so forth it is a very challenging materials problem that falls into the general category that we like to refer to as materials under extreme conditions and fusion is perhaps the most extreme of extreme conditions in terms of the temperatures  radiation damage that the material is subjected to the present presence of hydrogen and the effect that can have a materials my background is material science so while i can't say too much depth about fusion in terms of materials these are difficult problems and there are different sort of problems and in some of the areas that we focus on right now we at oakridge and around the world are very excited about nanotechnology and things we can do with that and then films for photovoltaics the materials we're talking about here are different types of steel the materials of heavy industry and to be honest it's the development of new steels is not something that as a nation we have been doing a lot of in recent times in fact you know many of the materials we have now were develops decades or even in some cases centuries ago they've served us very well but they don't necessarily have the characteristics to survive under the conditions that we need and that's why many of us has talked about the need to look at these materials issues even as we resolve the remaining physics questions of the plasma and many of those materials issues are the same whether it's inertial or magnetic confinement in some cases they may even be the same or similar to those face by fast reactors that might be used in closing the fuel cycle it's maybe not as sexy as nanoscience but getting better alloys is an important part of this equation thank you very much drew have to move and i know dr  thank you very much whether or not we are successful in getting a fusion power and i'm skeptical i'm still enormously supportive of this work because i think that we efficiency is a major interest i would like to suggest that before efficiency we can get huge gains from conservation conservation is to people getting in a car instead of one efficiency is getting in a prius instead of an s u v and we have enormous opportunities for for gains in conservation which is can be immediate and free really really simple you know we have a huge a reactor in the sun and i know that we disparage the use of solar and wind as baseload but i think that will be less technically challenging to make that base load than it would be to produce fusion power wherever you have a topography difference doesn't pump storage work very well for storing the excess energy you have when the wind is blowing in the sun is shining and i suspect that creating a huge banks of capacitors or enormous flywheels would be technically easier to do than trying to do what we're doing with fusion by by the way i'm a huge supporter i would if the if the the capability were out there to us or two and three times the amount of money that we appropriate for that i'd be happy to to recommend that to the appropriators but aren't there enough most opportunities for making solar and w load energy storage has huge leverage if we could if we could store even a small fraction of the grid for twenty four hours it would it would treat his door at all and pump storage just pump it up to the mountain and a lake up there and then run it down when the sun is not shining when there's not blowing through a turban it's really simple and in fact in tennessee t v a has something called raccoon mountain where they do exactly that so it does work but if you if you look at the at the capacity and efficiency of it it's hard to see it scaling to the level that we would need now if you push renewables as we should you can probably get up to about twenty percent and still handle the intermittency and you could push that farther if you had better energy storage whether it's electrical energy from storage in the form of batteries or the or the compressed air so i think there is tremendous leverage in storage it's an area we we should and are investigating but on on grid scales i believe it is a very challenging problem and it's one that is maybe not quite as difficult as fusion but it's it's it's in the same league that you've got as you mentioned something else that i think most people don't understand you said that we should be electrifying our transportation and you know we use two kinds of energy one is electrical energy and i think the future for electrical can make about as much electricity we ought to be using that's not true for liquid fuels because there is just no combination of substitute out there for liquid fuels and when gas and oil and coal are gone and they will be we can use electricity for but for that when now it's tough we just tore up all our street cars and we were proud that we were doing away with these antique things and we tore them all up now we need to be putting them back thank you for your recognition that we need to be doing that lines and we were told that there was eminent situation where the source of massive shortage of energy and that was proven false and now we're using an excuse of greenhouse gases which will cause global warming as an excuse to move forward on certain things and quite frankly none of the predictions of those people who are been advocating global warming have come true in the last nine years there's been cooling and in fact there are now reports that the polar ice cap the one pour the other arctic was never contract again but the polar ice caps are now expanding and so this idea of greenhouse gases causing global warming is the basis of a lot of things but i would not use it if i was in the scientific community as an excuse for moving forward with fusion energy research because that i think is becoming something that again is another theory that will be proven false and that is being proven false by the bye with the way the world is acting when i was a young energy of the future and you know what i'm sixty two years old now and i take it from what you have told us today that we haven't even had ignition yet after all of these years of research and my calculation is that we've had forty billion dollars worth of research and we don't have ignition yet dr bartlett observations is that research money there is limited research money in this country and might well be put to better use and finding out about how we can utilize the the heat from the core of the earth or the pumping technologies  and i do too but we have limited research dollars why is it that a fusion after all of these years and all of this money and with so little actual progress and meaning we haven't even had ignition yet even for a second i believe why should we continue why should we transfer this money to some of these other technologies that perhaps would be cheaper and what one last thought mr chairman and that is and then i'd like to panelists go to that question and that is i do believe that we should have at least one skeptic on the panel for every subject that we that we look at and it's ok all of all of you gentlemen have incredible credentials a lot more than i do that's for sure but some of the issues that i'm raising should be raised by people who've got ph d s in this and and be able to have a dialogue so that we'll have something to decide here in the panel rather than just accepting one point of view but  i've made a couple points please feel free i know you've got some things to counter  urgent things and the opportunities we have is in fact to address the questions of credibility that you raise our science basis is such that i believe we have good confidence in what is required of our next step to get the two to the stage of what we call burning plasmas in magnetic fusion and i think that is what you're referring to when you're talking about ignition where we're getting more energy out and we're putting into heat and control that i think our understanding the scientific basis for getting there is is quite strong so it is and we understand it and i oversimplify a little bit by saying it is it is a question of scale we understand at the present devices that we have that we have invested in  are not appropriate appropriately scaled and don't have the control technologies that we need to reach the scientific regime that you're talking about having said that an early part of the i think reason was that in two thousand and one there was a technical assessment of several options in magnetic fusion that we would pursue to understand understanding this burning plasma state  also with respect to credibility i think if you if you burrow down one more level you get to the question that has people have been raising here and that is the question of materials and harnessing the fusion plasmas i would be delighted i would view it as a major accomplishment collectively in our careers to be able to point quite dependably to the answers your questions demonstrably you know i i believe the scientific understanding is strong ties that we have a competent and strong bridge to the demonstrations that you're talking about understand also that publicly there are many who d exactly the sort of thing that you're talking about and i think we're within reach of doing that live support of nanotechnology in these things and i do support them but they take research money and we've had forty billion dollars eaten up for fusion  perhaps had we put into nanotechnology or some of the other more that we have some actually demonstrations of progress perhaps some of the other issues you're dealing with would have been solved in my colleagues we now have bartlett had some questions earlier that i know folks want to respond i divided the witnesses if you have additional questions or responses i know there are some eyebrows raised about whether forty billion is the correct number that has been spent please feel free to give us some written comment i just like to close with two questions i want to make sure we get one issue on the record real quickly my understanding is that the inertial fusion energy effort is i'm not sure the proper way to say it but does not necessarily have an official home within either an n s a or the office of science research and and i'm wondering if that's if that's something we're out of consider addressing give you a couple minutes we were down about seven minutes to get over to the boat so any b nuclear security administration's four billion dollars that already there including the not showing the simplicity the omega laser and so on we can use this to study the energy applications i mean there are so fusion and so that's why i think it's critical to have a home preference let me ask one last question and my colleagues way to go quick question if anybody were to say hey we don't need to conserve i want to really put the punctuation point on dr apartments if someone were to suggest we don't need to engage in conservation or renewable energy development because we've got fusion right around the corner anybody agree with that at all i think this is this is not a meeting or we absolutely have to conserve and do energy efficiency but we should not fool ourselves to think that that by itself will get us i get that but it would be foolish to say that fusion is right around the corner to solve all our energy needs mr davis is here i'm going to actually a very quick question my colleagues are free to head out but if you have other questions to as some believe that will supply our energy needs why do we bother with fusion is all i think that the the challenge is that in order to get to the sort of goals that i think we as a nation have in terms of energy independence and e missions we are going to need renewables we're going to need storage we're going to need baseload carbon free generating capacity as well and so we should certainly be using renewables as much and as quickly as we can but they will not scale to meet all of our needs and that is where a clean base load generating capacity like fusion has the potential to be is very valuable as part of our longer term term r and d portfolio and not to say that we shouldn't be pushing as hard as we can as we fast as we can on the things that we can do easily and quickly like energy efficiency we get roughly twenty percent  would you see as a possible projection from fusion you do fusion and the research we're doing fusion can play exactly the sort of role in our electric grid that fission plays today and in fact in the end cision has a fuel supply need so in the very long term this decision would be probably superseded by fusion challenges have been very refreshing and much appreciated by myself and i think by my colleagues as well again thank the witnesses for their time and for their many years of service and we look forward to continuing the dialogue if you have additional comments on the record of what would be remain open for two weeks to offer those