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Wohha - we need to go to 0 emissions in 30 years. Even in the very best case Fusion will be producing ~20% of our energy by then (and I stress, this was achieve

by sgt101 9y ago

Wohha - we need to go to 0 emissions in 30 years. Even in the very best case Fusion will be producing ~20% of our energy by then (and I stress, this was achieved with Fission in some states because of bomb making; so it proves it's possible but definitely not going to happen by itself). So we need renewables and electric cars for at least 70 years. And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than ice ones. Also, just because you can make fertilizers and put them on crops doesn't mean that's a good idea. Water courses all over the world are poisoned with chemical fertilizers. Same for desalinization - the by products are nasty. And fusion itself will produce radioactive waste. The linings of the reactors become ablated and radioactive and I think that one of the great benefits of Professor Whyte's scheme is that servicing the reactor becomes much easier and faster - but the removed components need to be dealt with carefully. It's a great and exciting thing - but not a panacea; we have to work hard to deliver a liveable world for 10 billion and the 500 years after the peak.

exo762 9y ago
I never said it is panacea. I said it is civilizational game changer. Some of your intuitions are wrong because they assume no source of cheap energy. With cheap clean energy you can scrub CO2 out of air, you can rework any nasty byproduct of desalination into its components and recombine them into something safe or reuse in other industrial processes. You can recycle literally anything. > And fusion itself will produce radioactive waste. This is not a technical or economical problem. You put this stuff into metal containers, you put those metal containers into a hangar, you put guards to prevent people from damaging containers. We do it now and we do it well. > And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than ice ones. While I love electric cars (and I want to buy one), they are not really better. Those batteries are both toxic and put a huge ecological burden on environment in production and recycling. They have a short term future and promise, since we need to stop producing CO2 now. Long term? Not so sure, since progress on batteries front is and was very slow.

by sgt101 9y ago

exo762 9y ago

I never said it is panacea. I said it is civilizational game changer. Some of your intuitions are wrong because they assume no source of cheap energy. With cheap clean energy you can scrub CO2 out of air, you can rework any nasty byproduct of desalination into its components and recombine them into something safe or reuse in other industrial processes. You can recycle literally anything. > And fusion itself will produce radioactive waste. This is not a technical or economical problem. You put this stuff into metal containers, you put those metal containers into a hangar, you put guards to prevent people from damaging containers. We do it now and we do it well. > And electric cars actually seem better (faster, more reliable) than ice ones. While I love electric cars (and I want to buy one), they are not really better. Those batteries are both toxic and put a huge ecological burden on environment in production and recycling. They have a short term future and promise, since we need to stop producing CO2 now. Long term? Not so sure, since progress on batteries front is and was very slow.