Mar 152009
 
Share
Parameter space occupied by inertial fusion en...
Image via Wikipedia

If you hang around the renewable-energy business for long, you’ll hear a lot of tall tales. You’ll hear about someone who’s invented a process to convert coal into vegetable oil in his garage and someone else who has a duck in his basement that paddles a wheel, blows up a balloon, turns a turbine and creates enough electricity to power his doghouse.

Hang around long enough and you’ll even hear that in another 10 or 20 years hydrogen-powered cars or fusion energy will be a commercial reality. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard one of those stories, I could buy my own space shuttle. No wonder cynics often say that viable fusion energy or hydrogen-powered cars are “20 years away and always will be.”

But what if this time is different? What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste, was indeed just 10 years away or less? That would be a holy cow game-changer.

Are we there?

Read more . . .

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

  One Response to “The Next Really Cool Thing – Fusion?”

Comments (1)
  1. Why wait 20 years for something that could be done in five:

    There may be a faster path to fusion. Like 5 years:

    Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

    Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been fully funded by the Obama administration?

Leave a Reply