Here’s a fun one: Just when you think there can’t be anything new to hit the airwaves, MIT goes and puts a timetable on commercial nuclear fusion.

Cue the backstory, please

Our current methods of creating nuclear energy is where, through complicated and dangerous mucking about with radioactive material, atoms are split to super-heat water for the purpose of—get this—spinning a turbine. Yep. Dangerous, space-aged processes used to spin a generator made popular by Thomas Edison (or Nikola Tesla, depending on whom you ask).

Not surprisingly, this method of electricity generation is costly, environmentally disastrous, and not exactly efficient. So, why do we use this method at all? The quick answer is that our aged infrastructure requires these power plants to provide speedy electricity when our consumption outstrips coal- or natural-gas-fueled power plants.

But the reason this news about MIT’s recent claim (that we can have accessible nuclear fusion within 15 years) is such a big deal is that current nuclear plants use fission, instead of fusion to generate energy. This slight difference in vowels translates into a world of opportunity… and frustration.

So, what’s the difference?

To make this as simple as possible, just take a look at the words’ meanings:

• Fission: to break apart.
• Fusion: to merge together.

Nuclear fission uses hard-to-find and difficult-to-make materials, since it doesn’t pay to split just any old atom. Why atoms? Because there is a TON of energy that holds atoms together. So, if you can break that bond, some of that energy is yours to use.

However, there is a little issue with finding atoms easy enough to break—and powerful enough to make the energy released worth using. The best material for splitting atoms is also highly radioactive and extremely hard to come by. Hence, the inefficiency I mentioned earlier.

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is the act of bringing atoms together. This, unlike splitting atoms, can be done with some of the more run-of-the-mill elements out there, like “heavy” hydrogen. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.

Handy for life, bad for fusion

The problem with fusion comes when you try to make two atoms merge together. Ironically, the same energy keeping those little guys together, also prevents atoms from coming in contact with other atoms. TONS of energy spent forcing atoms away from each other just so we don’t just melt into whatever we touch.

In order to merge atoms, then, there needs to be significant force applied to those particles. In the sun, fusion happens naturally thanks to gravitational forces we can’t even imagine. But on earth, we need a way of smacking two atoms together really, really, really hard.

There are dozens of methods being researched and tried to accomplish this cosmic task, and each has its disadvantages and advantages. But the one thing each method has in common is that none of them work. At least, not to make more energy than is put in. Heck, you can make a fusion reactor in your living room, if you want, but don’t expect to go off grid anytime soon.

So, why are we talking about this?

Energy is the answer to a lot of the issues we discuss in this blog. Sustainability, climate change, and even conflict minerals are couched in the energy industry—or can be mitigated or even removed by solving the energy dilemma. And, technology is useless without the stuff.  

But this is what we’re left with: fission is doable, but environmentally and financially costly—not to mention, extremely inefficient. And fusion is unbelievably difficult to do (at least to get more power out than what’s put in), but it is much more efficient, and perhaps less costly, if able to be done effectively.

You may be asking, what about the output? Does fusion really have all the clout we’ve been told it has? We think this is best illustrated with a snapshot of our energy methods (see inset image). Traditional energy-generation methods require almost exponentially more resources to produce the same amount of electricity as around a mere 600 pounds of fusion fodder.

Plus, the stuff to make fusion happen can be found in common seawater so it’s insanely abundant and relatively environmentally neutral. More energy with less resources, non-environmentally harmful fuel, and it runs on extremely common elements? That’s why commercially-viable fusion in 15 years is a big deal.

For a cool interactive video tour of the inside of MIT’s C-Mod fusion reactor, click here.