Two significant developments in fusion technology were announced this week. At the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the US, the National Ignition Facility announced that their laser compression device achieved greater than 1 MJ fusion energy output, six times higher than the team’s previous best and a strong indicator that the technology can be scaled to make practical levels of power. A much older fusion technology, the stellarator, is enjoying a new lease on life with recently published experiments from the Max Planck Institute in Germany which show dramatically higher efficiencies, consistent with conventional tokamak devices.

Nuclear propulsion for commercial cargo ships has been expected since the birth of naval nuclear propulsion in the mid-1950s, but with the exception of the experimental NS Savannah, no cargo ship has been powered by atomic energy. With the increased urgency of CO2 reduction however, the technology is under assessment again and shows promise both for environmental reasons and because of higher oil prices. Earth 300 Ventures, a Singapore-based environmental group, plans to launch a large research vessel in 2025 which is designed to accept an advanced reactor, possibly a molten salt design, some 5 to 10 years later. In the meantime, the UK is revamping Maritime regulations to be ready for commercial atomic vessel traffic.

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