Energy Engineering Seminar: Scott Hsu, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Description

What is needed for fusion energy to impact mid-century power generation?

ABSTRACT:  Fusion energy has long been thought to be the holy grail of energy, with abundant fuel, no carbon emissions, no long-lived radioactive byproducts, and less weapons-proliferation risk compared to fission.  In reality, fusion development has been impeded by both significant scientific/technical and socio-political challenges, and the path toward timely commercial fusion energy remains uncertain, especially in a highly competitive energy landscape.  There are movements afoot, especially in the US but also elsewhere, to take a more aggressive approach to fusion-energy development, including private-sector involvement.  There is growing interest in potentially disruptive, innovative fusion approaches, e.g., based on magneto-inertial fusion (MIF), compact tokamaks using high-temperature superconductors, or other alternate concepts.  There is also a growing coalition of fusion stakeholders aiming to establish a sustainable "public-private partnership" to realize an economically competitive, grid-ready demonstration fusion power plant by or before 2040.

BIO: Scott C. Hsu is a plasma and fusion scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (since 2002).  Scott’s research has focused on laboratory experimentation on scientific topics at the intersection of fundamental plasma physics, plasma astrophysics, and innovative fusion concept exploration.  Most recently, Scott led a multi-institutional project to explore and develop an innovative fusion-energy concept called plasma-jet-driven magneto-inertial fusion (PJMIF) that is sponsored by the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) under its ALPHA (Accelerating Low-Cost Plasma Heating and Assembly) program.  Scott is the author or co-author of 70 refereed research publications in plasma and fusion science, has been the research advisor for ten postdocs and Ph.D. graduate students, and was a co-recipient of the 2002 American Physical Society Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research.  In 2016, he testified on the status of DOE support of innovative fusion energy concept development to the Energy Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.  Scott earned a B.S. summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering in 1993 from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences (Program in Plasma Physics) in 2000 from Princeton University.