Fusion, the Future, and Us
Tokamak Energy in the UK has reportedly successfully tested a fusion reactor. That puts it on schedule to provide electricity generated from fusion to the grid by 2030, 13 years from now.
For those who don’t know, fusion is a clean source of energy that works (much like the sun) by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium. It produces no radiation or pollution, and requires only hydrogen, the most abundant element, as a fuel. No mining, no drilling, no dumping.
How abundant is hydrogen?
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. (Harlan Ellison)
Which brings up my next point:
We live in a world in which Scotland gets almost all its electricity from wind, in which Germany (hardly a sunny locale) produces so much renewable energy that some days it pays its customers to use electricity, and in which traditionally-conservative China is installing one wind turbine and a soccer-field-sized area of solar panels every hour. Renewable energy is the future, and fusion will eventually lead the way.
Where is the United States in this race to the future?
Unfortunately, we’re stuck in the past, building pipelines, drilling new oil wells, and lifting restrictions on coal companies.
What do you suppose will happen when the global fossil fuel industry collapses due to lack of demand? Economies that rely on oil will collapse with them. Those who work in oil will find themselves suddenly (but predictably) unemployed. Civil unrest will likely result. The Middle East will lose most of its income.
And, barring a future-oriented approach, we’ll be in trouble.
We don’t have a future-oriented approach. We have a short-term, profit-maximizing approach. But don’t worry: the invisible hand of the market will correct that in time. The market abhors outdated technology. And it’s merciless in its judgment. The market will correct us, but that doesn’t mean it will be pretty. How many companies still exist that failed to keep up with emerging technology? Not many.
The sad thing is, it didn’t have to be this way.
Back in the early 1980s, I was a dispatcher at an industrial gas company. We delivered liquid helium, used to supercool other materials, to a secret lab at a local government-funded facility. Our truck driver said they had some crazy idea that they could turn liquid hydrogen into helium and generate electricity doing it. They worked on it for several years. Then they started using enormous amounts of liquid helium. One day, the driver told us that whatever they were building, they had it working. (He had no idea what fusion was.) Two weeks later, the Reagan administration cut the funding and the project was closed down, never to be heard from again.
Why would our government shut down a project that produced cheap, clean energy? The more elucidating question is, who benefited from shutting it down? Instead of fusion, we got 30 years of fossil fuel domination, 30 years of CO2 emissions, 30 years of drilling, mining, spills, and pollution– and 30 years that included record oil company profits, heavily subsidized by tax breaks that shift the burden of paying for our government to us, the taxpayers.
Now England is developing fusion, and it looks like we’ll be left behind.
When will we start running our government with the future in mind?
I’m not holding my breath.