Public perspectives on the design of fusion energy facilities

TL;DR

This study explores public perspectives on fusion energy facility design through participatory workshops, highlighting community values, safety concerns, and the importance of early engagement for social license.

Contribution

It introduces a participatory design methodology for involving communities in fusion facility planning, diverging from traditional top-down siting approaches.

Findings

Community values prioritize integrity and respect.

Design themes include community legacy, safety, and transparency.

Positive public sentiments enhance understanding and trust.

Abstract

As fusion energy technologies approach demonstration and commercial deployment, understanding public perspectives on future fusion facilities will be critical for achieving social license, especially because fusion energy facilities, unlike large fission reactors, may be sited in closer proximity to people and communities, due to distinct regulatory frameworks. In a departure from the 'decide-announce-defend' approach typically used to site energy infrastructure, we develop a participatory design methodology for collaboratively designing fusion energy facilities with prospective host communities. We present here our findings from a participatory design workshop that brought together 22 community participants and 34 engineering students. Our analysis of the textual and visual data from this workshop shows a range of design values and decision-making criteria with 'integrity' and 'respect' ranking highest among values and 'economic benefits' and 'environmental protection/safety' ranking highest among decision-making criteria. Salient design themes that emerge across facility concepts include connecting the history and legacy of the community to the design of the facility, care for workers, transparency and access to the facility, and health and safety of the host community. Participants reported predominantly positive sentiments, expressing joy and surprise as the workshop progressed from learning about fusion to designing the hypothetical facility. Our findings suggest that carrying out participatory design in the early stages of technology development can invite and make concrete public hopes and concerns, improve understanding of, and curiosity about, an emerging technology, build toward social license, and inform context-specific development of fusion energy facilities.