Economic and Environmental Assessment Modeling of Magnetic and Inertial Fusion Reactors

In order to search for economically and environmentally optimized fusion reactors, physics properties, engineering designs and the cost of electricity (COE) are evaluated by the PEC (Physics-Engineering-Cost) system code for several magnetic confinement fusion reactors including tokamak (TR), helical (HR) and spherical tokamak (ST) reactors. The life-cycle CO2 emission amounts are also evaluated for various blanket designs using input-output table. This code has recently been upgraded to apply to inertial fusion reactor (IR) designs. The advantage of high-beta TR designs in COE and the advantage of compact ST designs in life-cycle CO2 emission reduction are clarified in the present economical and environmental assessments. The probable merits of IR design in both values are also clarified in the present model. The increase in net electric fusion power from 1GW to 3GW leads to 38% reduction in COE and 23% reduction in CO2 emission amounts. The scaling formulas of COE and CO2 emissions are derived as a function of plasma beta and net electric power. When the carbon tax of around 3,000 yen/t-CO2 is introduced, the COE of fusion reactor might be same level on that of coal-fired electric power plant and 1.5 times lower than that of oil-fired electric power plant.