Modeling magnetic confinement fusion power plants in future energy systems

Increasing energy costs which result from the increasing energy demand worldwide, climate crisis and the currently unstable geopolitical situation in Europe indicate the need for new low-emission, reliable energy supply technologies which utilize local energy resources. The use of controlled nuclear fusion reactions as an earth-bound energy source holds a significant potential and could provide a reasonable contribution for meeting the rising global electricity and energy demand of the future. Magnetic confinement fusion reactors are to be commercialized over the next few decades, with ITER and a demonstration power plant (DEMO) as important milestones to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale energy source. Current European fusion research roadmaps envisage the use of fusion power plants in the second half of the 21st century. However, projections of long-term European energy trends do not yet explicitly consider the use of fusion power plants while an increasingly complex landscape in energy and climate policies makes it difficult to forecast the long-term energy system developments. Thus, to assess the potential of nuclear fusion in long-term energy system developments, optimal future pathways regarding energy system relevant criteria - such as economic aspects, technical limitations, and security of the supply, are to be examined. For this reason, research work is conducted regarding the description and modeling of, as well as the systematic scenario analysis including nuclear fusion power plants in energy systems. In previous studies we considered fusion power plants as a system of three main components, which are fusion reactor, thermal energy storage and power conversion system, and defined five operating states, depending on the required and active auxiliary plant subsystems. This included definition of the respective parameters and their prospective values, regarding power self-consumption. In this work, we present our approach for modeling tokamak and stellarator type fusion power plants in energy system optimization tools urbs and evrys for analysis of their optimal expansion and dispatch planning in Europe and the ASEAN region. A dispatch planning model is applied on a European energy system to examine the added value of fusion power plants in a future energy system as well as the conditions that favor their usage, assuming that the hurdle of high investment costs for construction of fusion power plants has been overcome and there are fusion power plants on the electricity market. Furthermore, the ASEAN region is considered in the expansion planning modeling due to its intensive population and energy demand rise, low power exchange between the countries, and a high affinity for new technological developments. First results regarding the modeling of the European energy system will be presented. They indicate that fusion will be used in Europe once the investment hurdle has been overcome.     «

Increasing energy costs which result from the increasing energy demand worldwide, climate crisis and the currently unstable geopolitical situation in Europe indicate the need for new low-emission, reliable energy supply technologies which utilize local energy resources. The use of controlled nuclear fusion reactions as an earth-bound energy source holds a significant potential and could provide a reasonable contribution for meeting the rising global electricity and energy demand of the future. M...     »