Investigating the Impact of Technology Progress on Bridging the Technological Valley of Death for Future Fusion Energy

Ensuring energy stability is an essential issue in achieving a sustainable society. Therefore, scientists continue research in pursuit of the ideal energy source, but that has not yet been achieved. Fusion energy has been believed an ideal energy source because it has various merits. Many developed countries have been researching fusion energy for a long time, but it has not yet been commercialized. This is because there are many technical challenges for commercialization. To overcome these difficulties, the ITER ("The Way" in Latin) Organization was established as an international project in 2007, but the ITER Organization still faces technical and organizational challenges, which are barriers to commercialization. This investigation aims to identify the factors that hinder the commercialization of fusion energy. The thesis discusses the possible strategies that the ITER Organization may take to achieve sustainable growth. The research applies the ARIES framework to perform the investigation. First, the current situation surrounding the fusion energy project is summarized by literature review, enterprise landscape analysis, and stakeholder analysis. These analyses reveal some of the reasons for why the ITER project faces the challenges of schedule delays and increasing construction costs. Followed by these analyses, current architecture analysis and holistic vision of the future are conducted as a basis for proposing several alternative architecture concepts. In addition, these architecture concepts are evaluated based on the selected criteria set. The evaluation suggests the preferred concept is Cost Data Analysis-based Organization. Finally, this study performs future proofing for the selected architecture concept to confirm the robustness and formulates a high-level implementation plan for adopting the selected architecture concept.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Kuribayashi, Shunsuke

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Donna H. Rhodes

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139435

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/139435