Energy, material and land requirement of a fusion plant

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design 2001-11, Vol.58, p.1081-1085
• Main Authors: Schleisner, L, Hamacher, T, Cabal, H, Hallberg, B, Lechón, Y, Korhonen, R, Sáez, R.M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accident prevention; Applied sciences; Consumption; Controled nuclear fusion plants; Electricity; Energy; Energy utilization; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Environmental impact; Exact sciences and technology; Fusion reactors; Installations for energy generation and conversion: thermal and electrical energy; Land; Land use; Thermal effects
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/S0920-3796(01)00553-1

The energy and material necessary to construct a power plant and the land covered by the plant are indicators for the ‘consumption’ of environment by a certain technology. Based on current knowledge, estimations show that the material necessary to construct a fusion plant will exceed the material requirement of a fission plant by a factor of two. The material requirement for a fusion plant is roughly 2000 t/MW and little less than 1000 t/MW for a fission plant. The land requirement for a fusion plant is roughly 300 m 2/MW and the land requirement for a fission plant is a little less than 200 m 2/MW. The energy pay back time, defined later in Section 6, is little more than half a year for a fusion plant with capacity 1 GWe. Only the electrical energy is accounted for as released energy not the thermal energy. In all these indicators, fusion compares well with conventional technologies while it consumes less ‘environment’ for the construction than renewable technologies, especially wind and solar.