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episode icon Idea Machines
Fusion, Planning, Programs, and Politics with Stephen Dean [Idea Machines #39]
In this conversation, Dr. Stephen Dean talks about h... more
Aug 30 2021 1h 7m
Chapter 1 59 sec
Chapter 2 59 sec
at the atomic energy commission, which then became the energy research and development of administration, which then became the department of energy in 1979. He left government to form the consultancy fusion, power associates, where you still want
Chapter 3 59 sec
And I think one of the most impressive things is that it has several different what it calls logics of funding, which is like different, different funding levels and different funding curves. And it actually, unfortunately, accurately predicts that if you fund fusion below a certain level, even if you're funding it continually you'll never get to
Chapter 4 59 sec
it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Steven Dean
Chapter 5 59 sec
in doing that I looked at our program and I Laid out a map basically that showed the different parts of the program on a map like a roadmap and what the timelines might be and what the functions of those of facilities would be
Chapter 6 59 sec
program and the identified sub elements, you know, not in great detail and, and budgets were not asked for at that time
Chapter 7 59 sec
administration decided to abolish the atomic energy commission and transition it into something called the energy research and development administration or arena
Chapter 8 59 sec
for the program. And he, he was obviously becoming sort of a senior manager for the many things and he wasn't certainly going to try and do this himself. And so he and I were very close
Chapter 9 59 sec
Last thing that you had to take into account a number of policy variables he said, and technical variables, which meant that he said, because need for the, for the, for fusion and the intent of the government and the funding is all in control by other people in the government
Chapter 10 59 sec
experiments that were under my control as a director of the confinement systems, division magnetic confinement systems. I was forcing all, all the people that were that whose budget I had to control over to, to tell me what they were doing and what they needed to do
Chapter 11 59 sec
logics. They ranged from both, you know, basically a steady level of effort to a maximum level of effort. And and we just started creating these things. During that six months, first six months of 1976, And this was the result
Chapter 12 59 sec
logic to what says moderately. Expanding. But the tech progress would be limited by the availability of funds. But new projects were not started unless we knew that funds would be available
Chapter 13 59 sec
series. So we assume that the funding was ample. We didn't have a number in mind. At that point, we started laying these things out and asking people
Chapter 14 59 sec
you created this plan sort of all the activities were happening already
Chapter 15 59 sec
ignition that getting to a fusion power plant required a couple of identifiable major facility steps. And these actually came from that map. I mentioned from 72, which said that from the experiments that we want to do in the near term, which were to build like a physics proof of principle experiment that had to be followed by an engineering step, that was an engineering test reactor
Chapter 16 59 sec
And that had to be then followed by a demonstration power plant. And that those steps were big facilities. Each one, much more expensive than the previous one and making a much more definitive demonstration of fusion that was on a. And, and the wiggly curves that you see, not the, the, the the smooth ones have these bumps on
Chapter 17 59 sec
plan, I don't know what would have happened. I don't think we would've gotten the support that we got in the next few years during the seventies that we got, because the outcome of this cut was that. The plan, the plan was published with all of its detail and all of its budget. It was published publicly
Chapter 18 59 sec
actually only lasted a couple of years before it transitioned to the department of energy, had a a head of it
Chapter 19 59 sec
And so the result of our plan was that Congress picked it up. It passed a legislation, making it national policy. And it was signed by president Carter in October 7th, 1980. And we thought at that point we were in that we had a commitment of the United States government at the presidential level to implement this the, the plan for getting there by the year 2000
Chapter 20 59 sec
want to completely reevaluate and start over. And so that's what, that's what happened to this plan in 1981. Got it. And so, because as far as I can tell we've, we've sort of like the, the, the way that it's panned out is that we've, we've sort of followed below logic one, right?
Chapter 21 59 sec
There's one, but there's one caveat to that is that in the 1980s Ronald Reagan was a post to all of this energy stuff until 1985. When he met with Gorbachev. And they decided to work together on fusion and build our first major step that was in our plan. We were going to build this engineering device in the 1980s and he and Grover Jeff decided let's get together and build it together with
Chapter 22 59 sec
the purpose and the value of this plan was less as a coordination mechanism for the people doing the work and more as a sort of communication mechanism with people sort of outside the organization in terms of
Chapter 23 59 sec
Congress
Chapter 24 59 sec
go
Chapter 25 59 sec
business people in the utilities whose main purpose was to make money. And they were not interested in getting involved in brand new technologies. They are only comfortable with the technologies that they had. Yeah. But that makes a lot of sense. And I guess to sort of go, go back to you
Chapter 26 59 sec
just sort of say that management objectives was an OMB guidance in the early seventies. And it's soon disappeared from the the roof work, if you will, as the the OMB. One of the things that happens in Washington every two years is that people change in administrations changed
Chapter 27 59 sec
program anymore. You are a science program and we are going to evaluate you and have you managed like a science program
Chapter 28 59 sec
last year, but up until just very recently they're trying to put now the energy mission back into the, into the mission, but it hasn't actually formally happened at OMB yet. Got it. And just, just to sort of pull us back to well mentioned by objectives and just more broadly having very concrete plans W w w do you think it was useful or do you think it was just sort of like a a fad almost
Chapter 29 59 sec
money and then it all falls apart
Chapter 30 59 sec
of satisfaction in the scientific community since nobody seems to care, if you should never goes on the grid. Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess like counterfactually, if the money had been there, so actually one thing that I, I still do find really impressive about the plan, although it is disappointing is that you basically predicted that
Chapter 31 59 sec
accounted for all the things that you would need to do over the course of several decades? In order to, to get to fusion as an energy
Chapter 32 59 sec
mid seventies had been maintained and, you know, right now I think we had 80 people in the office and they were all management oriented
Chapter 33 59 sec
people, but still the money. The government's laboratories in their technology. People like Oak Ridge has a big technology laboratory. And so there was technology programs being developed in these laboratories. And other a little bit of it was going out into industries as on a job basis for the labs, but we didn't have a big industry program
Chapter 34 59 sec
that talent from, we had a bunch of people, for example, in fusion power associates at the beginning, who were the architect engineers that were building nuclear power plants
Chapter 35 59 sec
Yeah. And I guess you don't really see plans like this today. It feels like. And so I get the sense that creating plans like this, and more generally like technology management, like competence, technology management is a bit of a lost art. Do you, do you think that's true or, or am I, or is it like, am I missing
Chapter 36 59 sec
they, they do it the right way, but they're not on top of the cost and schedule and they do get taken to the cleaners by these companies, but somehow or another, they do get the job done, even if it's costing more than it should and taking longer
Chapter 37 59 sec
in the seventies and we were laying out our plans, we thought we knew how, how to do it and do it right
Chapter 38 59 sec
him as a department of energy, wanted him to put this program into the Lac, their national laboratories. And he had a fight them tooth and nail through his friends in Congress to get put in charge of the program and be allowed to put this out to general electric and Westinghouse
Chapter 39 59 sec
just that. And they got there. So I have to say that that was a success story and it remains a success story today with the evolution of a commercial industry
Chapter 40 59 sec
of leadership and management, it seems like it can be done, but it all depends on management and it's rare in government. And I would say it's rare even outside of government as well. And, and so, so I guess the upshot of this for me is that and correct me if this is wrong, but that you feel like it's much more about sort of the, the individuals in charge
Chapter 41 59 sec
later, they'll turn it over to the national academies to evaluate or proposal new a plan. And I can't tell you, it's countless number of plans in fusion that are gathering dust on shelves over the past 40 years
Chapter 42 59 sec
have a very, like, you, you have consistent management, but they don't have a plan
Chapter 43 59 sec
from all over the world on a schedule to deliver this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment on a certain time schedule, he's got them all being delivered in a sequence and he's having them put together in a sequence. And he's got a great management plan and he's been keeping the thing on schedule now for the last five years
Chapter 44 59 sec
makes the plan
Chapter 45 59 sec
people feed him up the information and help create this plan
Chapter 46 59 sec
Yeah. And they probably like don't, the managers can't know enough to be able to say accurate. They don't know the level of detail. If there's a problem. For example, if there is a problem they can say, okay, let's fix that problem. And they go back to the people that know about it and they tell them, okay, you guys go out and find out how you're going to fix this problem and come back and tell me how you're going to do it
Chapter 47 59 sec
amount of precision, right? Like people make very, like hand-waving predictions now. Do you think, like there's been some kind of attitude shift around making predictions like that?
Chapter 48 59 sec
with the timescale that we had
Chapter 49 59 sec
see in, in modern modern predictions where there, who are, who it feels like it's like, step one, start project. Step two, question mark. Question mark. Question mark. Step three 30 years later, have this amazing result
Chapter 50 59 sec
five years to build them and five years to run them. So that kind of for each step was a 10 year step. And that gets you to a 20 year timetable
Chapter 51 59 sec
look at all the pieces of a power plant, you'll know that there's an awful lot of stuff in there that is not needed for a physics experiment, you know, a physics experiment, you know, what makes up a fusion plasma, and it has a whole bunch of diagnostics on it, and you're not sure what it's going to do
Chapter 52 59 sec
what's happening. You have to have high confidence that when it turns on it's going to run and not have to be shut down every day or every week to be fixed
Chapter 53 59 sec
testing and and development of codes of, of of a manufacture materials have to have codes. How long they'll last in this environment? Yeah. When will they fail? There's a whole skill set called Time to failure and time to repair the engineers, work with that physicists don't work with, if it breaks, it breaks, they just, you know, you know, they, they, they fix it because it's a small piece and they put pieces in, it takes them maybe a few weeks, but it a major piece of a power plant
Chapter 54 59 sec
Yeah. Interesting. So, so in a sense engineering work has a lot more to do with robustness than, than physics. Once, you know, the physics, it's an engineering problem to power commercial aviation. Okay. Yeah. I think that, I guess in my mind that that's still, like, there's still a lot of like research work to be done in engineering problems, even if it is just an engineering problem
Chapter 55 59 sec
totally physicists to mix of physicists and technology, people to a mixtures of engineers, to commercial companies that do costs and schedules and all of this stuff. This all has to be supervised by management. Got it
Chapter 56 59 sec
then we use you know, people that from industry and from utilities. Had done similar things. He found, we looked at the cost of nuclear power plants
Chapter 57 59 sec
stone that they were, they were absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And how did you think about like, places where there's just like, sort of deep uncertainty like where you would need to actually, in terms of a physics problem where you would actually need like some kind of discovery in order to get the thing work?
Chapter 58 59 sec
things come along and there's even one.at the bottom that says other things that were in very early stages of proof of principle, but we weren't knew that these things might come to fruition
Chapter 59 59 sec
And, and of course, if, if something really radical were to come along a long, one of these other paths it's listed, I'll say can see one if you'll, I don't know if you have it in front. But under other, you'll see a decision point in 1985 that we're going to try to bring some of those things to a
Chapter 60 59 sec
utilities, if they were better. Got it. Yeah, this is so cool. One of the really big takeaways that like, just like keeps coming through is almost just like consistency of, of management and not so much like the plan, but like of, of a plan
Chapter 61 59 sec
fortunately, most of the alternates that are out there and these little companies they've been formed by good fusion. People who have, who have fallen on bad times because the government started funding all their money into tokamaks and stopped funding their off and net ideas
Chapter 62 59 sec
thing 20 years after it? So I encourage all these things if they're credible people and you know, right now there are a couple of
Chapter 63 59 sec
they've got a facility that they're, that they've committed to in Massachusetts, and they're trying to build one step, a physics demonstration followed by a electricity generator. And so I, I have great hopes for them
Chapter 64 59 sec
that idea first came. Ascend Princeton is actually had built one of those. And as another one coming in operation in a couple of years, that would support that line. So there's a couple of variations along the token back line that are looking, looking very good
Chapter 65 59 sec
two
Chapter 66 59 sec
only the governments that seem to be able to afford to do this
Chapter 67 59 sec
dollars, some of them from private investors and they're building some things and hopefully they'll be successful, but these will not be powerful
Chapter 68 52 sec
problem because there isn't going to be a real fusion demonstration plant built for less than a couple of billion dollars
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