The notion policymakers have put the electric cart in front of the horse is well documented. Regulations requiring a speedy transition to zero-emissions Class 8 commercial motor vehicles are considered unrealistic because America lacks the capacity to produce enough power. That all changed — at least in theory — when a seemingly futuristic nuclear fusion breakthrough occurred in early December.
“It feels like a new era has started, the Wright Brothers moment of fusion,” Heike Freund, CEO at a German fusion startup, reportedly said.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reportedly achieved a net gain fusion reaction in its Southern California laboratories. In layman’s terms, that means the process produced more energy than was required to bring about the fusion. While that may not sound like a watershed event to everyday truckers, the development of commercial applications could lead to almost limitless, zero-emissions electricity.
Nuclear fusion happens when a pair of light atomic nuclei come together and form a single heavier one. During the process, massive amounts of energy are released without the accompanying carbon emissions of other resources. The process involves only modest radioactivity and recreating it for commercial use proves challenging. Fusion transpires in hot charged gas full of free-roaming electrons and ions at temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius.
On the freight transportation side of the equation, electric truck regulations appear too ambitious. California leads the country in efforts to reduce diesel-generated air pollution. With few electric passenger vehicles and fewer battery-electric semi-trucks, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked vehicle owners to not recharge during Labor Day Weekend due to a lack of grid capacity. The move demonstrates the electric grid infrastructure cannot adequately power existing fleets.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) recently assessed the country’s electricity capabilities in light of zero-emission truck regulations. The findings echo sentiments that America currently lacks the bandwidth to significantly increase the number of semis.
“The study found that full electrification of the U.S. vehicle fleet would require a large percentage of the country’s present electricity generation. Domestic long-haul trucking would use more than 10 percent of the electricity generated in the country today — while an all-electric U.S. vehicle fleet would use more than 40 percent. Some individual states would need to generate as much as 60 percent more electricity than is presently produced,” an ATRI news release states.
Anika Stein, co-founder of German-American startup Focused Energy, agrees the laboratory success was the fusion “event of the century.” But significant research and development need to occur to prevent electrical grid blackouts and rolling brownouts experienced during peak heating seasons in Mid-West and Pacific Coast, among others. Although commercial usage may be more than a decade away, Stein and her colleagues appear optimistic about the future of energy.
“The question is no longer whether it is possible to create energy with fusion. The question has shifted to how we can make fusion so efficient that we can operate a power plant with this technology,” Stein reportedly said.
Sources: truckingresearch.org, wsj.com, ttnews.com
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