KEEP CALM and pay your electric bill.
KEEP CALM and pay your electric bill.
Limitless sustainable power isn't here yet.
A really important spark, but just a spark.
Who is old enough to remember the Moller Skycar from the 1980’s? In ’82 I kept a picture of one. I really wanted one. I dreamed of being the first on my block to fly to work every morning. Sadly, it’s 2022 and we are still decades from flying cars. That’s if they ever prove to be practical.
I thought about the Skycar upon hearing news from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility there within.
No doubt, this was a big deal in the physics world. It comes years late and billions of dollars over budget, BUT they did squeeze some atoms and extract more energy, less than a third more, than they expended creating the reaction.
This has never been done before. Many have created momentary fusion reactions, often destroying the equipment that made it possible. None were ever able to report a net energy gain from the effort. So the physics world has reason to pop corks today. This is serious shit.
But as wider news, this is page 6, below the fold. It certainly isn’t the game changer the TV talking heads would have you giggling about.
I’ve heard people speculating that yesterday’s event will lead to a working reactor in 10 years providing cheap, almost limitless power. Yesterday, a guest on the Blaze was predicting 5 years. To say I am skeptical would be an understatement.
Why?
First, this is called “science”, not “because I said so”.1 We don’t know Livermore actually succeeded yesterday until the experiment is repeated a few times, or better, duplicated by someone else. The latter isn’t likely due to the costs involved.
Second, between a big spark and a self-sustaining reaction there are an unknown series of steps. They could be in the thousands, each one more complex than the one before it. I would like to see scientists work the problem like they needed a reaction tomorrow. But I am not sanguine about seeing practical use in my lifetime.
Enter Uncle Stupid…I mean Sam!
Finally, and here’s the big one, since fusion involves farting around with atoms it’s a government operation from beginning to end.
That picture is from an article written in 2001, about 20 years after I first saw the Skycar - and 21 years ago. Look how that worked out. Have you seen any flying commuters yet? If the government can do this to a small aircraft, consider the red tape in which professional, risk-averse bureaucrats can enmesh a truly unknown fusion process.
It’ll be a minute before we see a fusion power plant wired to the grid. So calm down.
Not for nothin’… there is a nuclear technology, proven in the 50’s and 60’s that would serve us far better than windmills and solar cells. And it wouldn’t cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of our beautiful landscape. It would bridge the gap between the big spark and a real fusion reactor nicely. Take a look.
The only “science” synonymous with “because I said so” is climate “science”. This “science” is based one people modeling (not studying) climate scenarios based on their own subjective assumptions then making unsubstantiated pronouncements.