CaptainExplosion said:
badskywalker said:
First Commerical Fusion Plant in construction in Washington State
As someone who knows a thing or two about physics, I was rather skeptical when I first read about this article, but doing some more research has made me genuinely, though still cautiously, optimistic about the future of fusion. The first commerical fusion reactor is being built here in the States (surprised the hell outta me we are the ones doing it). If successful there is a genuine argument to be made for investments to fusion energy en masse as a replacement for most energy sources. It offers a fair number of advantages over every form of electricity generation.
Less carbon emissions than fossil fuels
Less space than Solar and Wind
No battery issue like Solar has
No nuclear waste like Fission
I'm optimistic as it does not rely so much on major advances in physics (like a new magnetic or superconductors) but more engineering challenges, many of which are resolved by just making the magnet bigger. There are still many challenges, so it is by no means a done deal, but they seem to be progressing in a good direction.
For scale, 50 MW equates to about 438 GWh a year, which while a paltry drop in the bucket compared to the US's total energy demand ~4 PWh a year or 4.2 million GWh is certainly something to look out for.
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I just hope it's kept stable, because we don't need another Chernobyl. Speaking of energy, these electric buses double as backup for the Denver Colorado power grid. |
Fusion deals with lighter, non-radioactive materials (preferably hydrogen as it has the best binding energy). Fission is the one that is inherently radioactive due to the splitting of unstable atoms to more unstable ones.
Also nuclear fission, even counting every incident and the obtainment of uranium from around the world is still by far the safest form of energy, cuasing the fewest deaths per kWh. The notion that it is dangerous is due to a few sporadic events that stoked large amounts of fear as to the damage it does.
