Fusion power could take us to the science fiction nirvana of unlimited power, if we’re smart enough to figure it out. Once fossil fuels are gone fission power could provide the energy bridge until fusion power plants are in place. We need to build more nuke plants soon, but can we do that without poisoning the Earth? Our track record on fission plants isn’t very good. Think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
Fusion and fission are the ying and yang of the atomic world. The Earth’s core is a huge fission reactor. Fission breaks large atoms, like uranium, into smaller atoms. Downside? Fission reactors can run amok and they produce nasty radioactive byproducts that last for thousands of years. Fusion is the way the sun works. Fusion combines two light atoms, like hydrogen, into a heavier atom. A fusion reactor can’t do a Chernobyl. It something goes wrong it just stops working. And fusion doesn’t produce anything that will kill you.
When I was a kid they predicted we’d have fusion power by 2000. Didn’t happen. So why don’t we have a fusion reactor? We’ve spent over fifty years and tens of billions of dollars trying. Scientists are using lasers to replicate the sun. They have been able to fuse atoms, but it’s taken more energy to power the lasers than what has been produced by the fusion. Once they get fusion working it will take more billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions dollars, to build the first commercial fusion reactor. Expensive but affordable in the context the seven hundred billion dollars the U.S. spends each year on defense.
It took the best and brightest from across the globe to build the first fission nuclear reactor in 1942. These same people went on to build the first atom bomb in three years. Why can’t we do the same with fusion? For the sake of our great-grandchildren we must fund an innovative organization of our best and brightest to realize the promise of fusion power. Otherwise the energy deficient world of Truth-Teller Rebellion will be mankind’s dead-end.
kennethdschultz 