" After decades of experimentation and billions of dollars in public investment, U.S. government scientists have reportedly achieved a major “breakthrough” in fusion energy technology, a potential game-changer in the critical pursuit of clean, reliable, and low-cost alternatives to fossil fuels and conventional nuclear power. "
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If this is true - we are looking at a pivotal moment in human history…cracking fusion power would be on par with the moon landings (possibly more so).
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The hardest part of Fusion now is not getting a reaction or even getting a somewhat sustained one, we know how to do that. The hardest part is doing it in a way that produces enough energy to make it useful.
If it can be made to work, then if my experience playing Sim City is in any way accurate, there will be no other power source that we will want to use. The metal in everything else from coal plants to wind turbines can be recycled and turned into reactors.
Source? 
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This was also on :
citing a paid site on:
… so now just some decades longer to…
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Yep - even if they have finally cracked fusion - it’ll probably be 20 years or more before the first commercial scale reactors come on stream.
I doubt i’ll see widespread adoption of commercial fusion power in my lifetime.
it’s another small step but the whole laser setup needed 300 megajoules of electrical energy to run. most articles focus on the 2 megajoules laser energy vs. 3 megajoules fusion output. it’s still a very long way and tokamaks still look more promising for power plants than this pellets stuff.
I used to have a really rosy view of fusion, thinking that it would solve so many of our problems.
Now, I’m not so sure. Even if the energy part is free (leapfrogging of course all of the logistical hurdles to get to that point), we still need materials to do anything. I have a sneaking suspicion that Fusion powered stripmining will be far from the clean, green future that people like to paint fusion as.
Even if we can charge our EVs for free, you know what roads are made of, right?
Even if we can power the foundries for free, you know where the ore comes from, right?
Plus, what’s all that ‘free’ energy going to do to global warming? Sure the emissions are low, but you are releaseing actual heat in a form that is locked up molecularly. That heat isn’t just going to go away.
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One of the key reasons why we do not live in mud huts and scrape by through hunting and gathering is because we explore and mine the earth for the purpose of obtaining materials. If your heart bleeds to the point where we should not so much as pierce the soil with a shovel (because it belongs to Gaia or something), then toss the technology, build a hut, and lead by example.
By the way, you were breathing out carbon dioxide when you wrote the post, care to do something about it? I know the question there is a little in the snide category, but we need to get over the idea of nature being fragile to the point where the slightest activity can potentially knock it off balance.
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I live in the Pacific Northwest. The historical photos of the tree stumps big enough for 50 people to stand on are hard to reconcile with the millions or acres of tree plantations now, none bigger than 2’ wide.
The destruction of the environment is real and has already happened over and over again. Look at pit mining, look at strip mining, look at mountaintop removal, listen to John Prine’s Paradise.
I know you live in Kansas, which isn’t exactly known for its natural splendor. But in a lot of place on this earth, the environment is something worth considering.
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Also, to respond to your snideness, I think the fixation on CO² is a way to redirect the focus from the core issue of pollution. Redefining what emissions are bad give massive corporations a ton of leeway in the category of literally everything else. I’m not a big fan of the tactics of the global warming movement, so there’s probably more we agree upon than you think.
On the flip side, the fact that someone is offended by the simple concept of building things and putting them into motion was almost unheard of until recently. In fact, there are now some activists calling for humans to be phased out, which has always been the intended conclusion of this insane downward spiral of pessimism and fatalistic thinking. The government and the media alike are lieing to you, they always have been.
Now then, can we continue on about Fusion, or would it be better if the staff here do the planet a favor and just turn the servers off permanently?
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Nobody is offended by building things. People are offended by the reckless exploitation of finite resources, air pollution, etc.
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Hey guys, please keep the discussion calm, factual, and civil, thanks!
Speaking as myself- not as a staff member- I’d love to see your source for this. I’m pretty sure you’re the one being lied to by the media, as you say, if you believe this is true
I do not know if I can find the story now, but the existence of people who want to see the extinction of the human race (for reasons such as environmental) is not a myth.
VHEMT
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement - Wikipedia
Now then, the overpopulation and resource demand issues are actually things a bunch of suns in a box can actually help with (as every single nation that rises into prosperity, without fail, ends up seeing a plunge in birth rates). Prosperity levels meanwhile are closely tied with energy costs in many cases (so cheap Fusion, should it happen, is objectively far better than endless fields of Windmills and Solar Panels). That also means restoring to nature a lot of space that was built up in the name of ‘saving’ it.
I was talking about fusion, you were the one going off topic, ranting about environmentalists.
Maybe I’m just a little more conservative than you, but building infrastructure to extract finite resources as fast as possible seems like a very liberal use of assets…
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One of the most interesting answers I heard as regards the issue of population growth and the impact on the environment was from David Attenborough.
Somebody was trying I think to catch him out on this and he simply said you can go a long way with promotion of women’s rights. He theorised that in almost all society’s were women have equal rights the population tends to stabilize and go down.
This is a big and complex issue so I don’t want to generalise or make trivial glib points. This is just something I remembered him saying and it stayed with me. After all he has travelled extensively over countless decades seen a lot and talked to a lot of people. And as an environmentalist he is also a humanist. The two are not incompatible. In fact they go together. The last thing the world needs right now is the demonisation of the environmental movement.
Anyway I better be careful on here. I always avoided these off topic threads. First the Twitter conversation and now this.
All the best to everyone.
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