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Nuclear fusion: What of the future? 213

Table 5.2 EUROfusion future energy scenarios used to examine
the possible roles of fusion power [21]

Storyline Description
Harmony Politicians from different world regions agree to work together to achieve
very stringent global CO 2 emissions targets and energy market operators
take a long-term view when deciding what technologies to invest in.
This is a world of strong environmental responsibility
Paternalism Differentiation between different world regions on their approaches to
environmental responsibility, with operators taking a medium-term view
of investments. Nevertheless, good political co-operation on global
carbon emissions is assumed to meet tight targets
Fragmentation A scenario of weak environmental responsibility, with short-term
considerations dominating. Regional agreements on carbon emissions
targets are achieved and a global energy trade is assumed to exist, but
so does regional economic competition

of different policies toward emissions limits, energy prices, and international trade
and co-operation can be explored (Table 5.2). In addition, models of particular energy
systems can be created to examine the tradeoffs between intermittent sources such as
renewables, energy storage systems, and baseload generation technologies such as
coal or nuclear [22,23]. In these scenarios, fusion tends to displace fission generation
depending on assumed costs and resources, and while energy storage combined with
intermittent generation can play a very significant role in a mixed system, baseload
sources are still required when accounting for seasonal and stochastic variations,
albeit at much lower levels than currently used.
To fit fusion into these scenarios, we need an estimate of the costs of energy gen-
erated this way. Making estimates of the costs of a commercial release of a new tech-
nology is also difficult. Like fission, fusion systems tend to be capital-intensive (that
is, expensive to build but relatively cheap to run) compared to fossil-fuel systems,
which consume a great deal of fuel. Educated guesses can be made for the costs of
different systems based on the amount of materials used and learning factors for scal-
ing lab-based production to commercial production [8,24]. Such studies, usually based
on tenth-of-kind projections (that is, the cost of the tenth power plant rather than the
first, to account for some learning and development), lead us to believe fusion elec-
tricity can be competitive with fission costs. However, as, like fission, fusion internal-
izes a great many costs associated with safety, emissions, and waste management, it
also appears potentially expensive compared to fossil fuels [25]. In the energy market
scenarios, fusion only appears competitive where CO 2 emissions are tightly con-
strained and the resulting overall energy price is higher. This conclusion would change
if projected fusion costs could be sharply reduced.
These cost estimates also allow us to see which systems contribute most to the
cost of electricity (CoE) for fusion and therefore where improvements might be made