Large US steel company invests in nuclear fusion to operate its plants
The largest American steel company is betting that nuclear fusion can help it eliminate carbon emissions and power one of the most energy-intensive production processes in the world, so, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, it has decided to invest heavily in it .
In a first-of-its-kind partnership between a large industrial company and a fusion startup, steelmakerNucor and Helion Energy plan to develop a 500-megawatt fusion power plant to be located at one of Nucor's U.S. steel mills by 2030.
This is enough electricity to power a few hundred thousand homes, about as much as a conventional power plant. Nucor is investing $35 million in Helion, which is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
The deal is a bet on fusion, a technology that may seem more science fiction than science and which has not yet produced electricity.
Helion has already reached an agreement with Microsoft which has financed fusion research by purchasing in advance the energy that will be produced by this company. He basically bought a promise, however attractive.
The deal shows how Nucor and many other manufacturers are desperate for clean electricity to make greener products, but are limited by a lack of abundant wind and solar power. Many green steelmaking techniques require immense power, creating the need for energy sources such as fusion that address some of the limitations of current renewable and battery technologies.
“We don't want to sit on the sidelines waiting for all these technologies and hoping that they will be developed,” said Leon Topalian, CEO of Nucor, which is therefore becoming a protagonist of this energy evolution, in an interview.
The Helion fusion project involves the collision of two pellets of fissile material at very high speed. The collision takes place in an area with strong magnetic containment, both to further contain the plasma and because Helio plans to obtain fusion with the recovery of thermal energy, but through the containment magnetic field which, compressed, will generate electrical energy directly with the Faraday effect. So no complex turbines or similar.
Nucor steel goes into buildings, cars and appliances around the world. In the states where it has plants, Nucor is among the largest consumers of electricity.
Customers like General Motors and heating and cooling equipment maker Trane Technologies are demanding greener steel, pushing Nucor to move more quickly toward clean energy. The company has been using recycled material to make cleaner products for years, but the steel industry faces energy consumption issues to meet climate goals and currently depends on local distribution networks, many of which rely on fossil fuels.
Nucor's fusion plant would have about 10 times the capacity of another plant Helion plans to build to provide fusion-generated electricity by 2028 for Microsoft. The deal with Microsoft, believed to be the fusion industry's first commercial deal, was announced in May.
Nucor intends to purchase power directly from Helion at its steel mill, rather than purchasing it from a power company or grid operator. If successful, this approach could provide a model for fusion companies looking to enter into similar agreements with energy customers. Helion could sell Nucor's unused excess power back to the grid operator, another potential boon for the development of the fusion industry.
Helion was one of the industry's largest fundraisers, raising about $630 million, including Nucor's investment. Altman has invested $375 million in Helion and said customer presence is key to keeping Helion focused on business realities.
Nucor recently invested in a more conventional type of nuclear power, fission, another zero-carbon technology being pursued by startups around the world. Nucor and fission company NuScale Power are exploring the possibility of using a small modular reactor to provide power to a steel mill.
Support for nuclear fusion and fission is a throwback for Nucor, which in the mid-20th century was called Nuclear Corporation of America as a service provider to the nuclear industry before rebranding and focusing on steel.
“Wind and solar are not going to be enough,” Topalian said. “We will have to evaluate how to move the ball forward in other areas.”
Meanwhile, there is still no functioning fusion power plant in Perl, despite the flood of money that has been poured into the sector, but now the path seems clear.
In Europe, however, another path is chosen, that of closing the steel mills. In the end it's easier than doing research.
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The article Large US steel company invests in nuclear fusion to operate its plants comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/grande-acciaieria-usa-investe-nella-fusione-nucleare-per-far-funzionare-i-propri-impianti/ on Thu, 28 Sep 2023 14:36:10 +0000.