Environmental and Economical Assessment of Various Fusion Reactors by the Calculation of CO2 Emission Amounts

Abstract

We compared the CO 2 emissions of several fusion reactors. The magnetic confinement systems evaluated here are the tokamak reactor (TR), helical reactor (HR), and spherical tokamak reactor (ST). These models are calculated by the Physics-Engineering-Cost (PEC) code. The inertial confinement fusion reactor (IR) is also evaluated, assuming its driver energy and driver efficiency. In addition, different blanket modules and fuels are considered in the TR designs. To calculate life-cycle CO 2 emission from fusion reactors defined by plasma parameters and radial build, we used a basic unit for CO 2 weights (kt-CO 2 /t-material). Calculation results indicate that CO 2 is emitted mainly in the construction stage of superconducting magnet systems for magnetic confinement fusion reactors. For the IR design, the driver system construction and pellet fabrication stages involve considerable CO 2 emission. By comparing fusion reactors with other electric power generation systems in terms of CO 2 emission, we confirmed that fusion reactors emit less CO 2 . Therefore, introducing a carbon tax has little effect on the economics of fusion reactors, and the cost of electricity (COE) from fusion reactors might be lower than that of oil-fired electric power plants when a carbon tax of around several hundred yen/t-CO 2 is introduced.

Core physics and safety analysis of Generation-IV Sodium Fast Reactors using existing and newly developed computational tools

“…Nuclear ssion produces low CO2 emissions, even taking into account all fuel cycle process (65 g CO2/kW h), compared with other energies like thermal plants (6001200 g CO2/kW h), solar panels (90 g CO2/kW h), and higher than wind or hydro power (3065 g CO2/kW h) [37,41,47,58,84].…”