Megajoules and megaheadlines are all meganonsense

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Another week, more fusion news, cue another overblown headline, as the mainstream media once again paid homage to industry hype, digesting nuclear propaganda soundbites without even a hiccup. 

On February 8, we learned that the Joint European Torus fusion project, also known as JET, had broken its own record in energy output during a last gasp attempt to make fusion work. The 40-year old project is now closed down for good. 

The moment  — and just a fleeting moment it truly was, lasting a mere 5.2 seconds — was duIy celebrated as another breakthrough for fusion.

“Nuclear fusion: new record brings dream of clean energy closer,” trumpeted the BBC who were especially smug since Torus is based in the UK.

“Nuclear Fusion World Record Smashed in Major Achievement”, said Science Alert.

“Scientists have made a record-setting fusion energy breakthrough,” blared the headline on Vice.

What actually happened? JET generated 69 megajoules of energy in those 5.2 seconds, breaking its previous record of 59 megajoules over 5 seconds in 2021.

For those of us who don’t go about measuring things in megajoules, I deferred to our colleague, physicist, M.V. Ramana, for an explanation. 

What are they really talking about here and is it actually a breakthrough?

“One can start with the annual average consumption of one US household,” Ramana said. “That’s about 10,500 kilowatt hours which is equivalent to 37,800 megajoules. Essentially using one hour = 3,600 seconds, and one joule = one watt-second.”

Head already spinning, I hoped he would do the rest of the math. He did. 

“The 69 megajoules generated by JET”, Ramana explained, “is equivalent to roughly 0.06 percent of the electricity consumed by an average US household.”

So a minuscule contribution. But here’s the catch. “The JET machine produced 69 megajoules, but this is all heat,” explained Ramana. “Only about a third of that can be converted into electricity under ideal circumstances.”

Mostly heat, and hardly any electricity. So what the JET fusion so-called breakthrough actually delivered was all hot air. Literally!

Then came some more hot air. “First ‘private’ nuclear reactor to power 2 million British homes” ran another headline. The private sector nuclear company in question is Westinghouse. Yes, that Westinghouse! The one whose executives are in jail over a failed new nuclear power plant project in South Carolina. The Westinghouse that went bankrupt, forcing its mega-giant parent company, Toshiba, to shed not only Westinghouse but all Toshiba’s nuclear assets to avoid going down with the Westinghouse ship.

The same Westinghouse that is now $20 billion over budget at its other new nuclear project at Vogtle in Georgia.

But the British press were all “oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen” over this announcement, a project that has about as much credibility as the whimsical plot of HMS Pinafore.

And finally, we learned that Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is seeking another $150 million to restart the old and decrepit Palisades nuclear plant.

Palisades has been closed for almost two years and the company that would re-open and run it, Holtec, which specializes in decommissioning and radioactive waste management, has zero experience running a nuclear power plant.

This latest ask comes on top of $150 million already approved last year for a Palisades restart and could be augmented by a $1.5 billion loan from the federal government as well. 

All of this nuclear nonsense comes on the heels of other hyperbole surrounding previous so-called advances in fusion (see our earlier coverage here and here), misrepresented almost universally as an imminent answer to our worsening climate crisis.

But, as the song goes in Pinafore, “Things are seldom what they seem.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.

Headline photo: Internal view of the JET reactor vessel by EUROfusion/Wikimedia Commons.