3 ms·
A couple of reflections. The first one being that fusion might very well be the remedy to get rid of carbon emissions once and for all, however it won't affect
by o-o- 6y ago
A couple of reflections. The first one being that fusion might very well be the remedy to get rid of carbon emissions once and for all, however it won't affect global warming. In fact, it might make it even worse.
The simple line of reasoning being that if energy becomes 100 times cheaper, humanity will fast find ways to consume 100 times the amount of energy. A high amount of that energy will end up as heat.
The second reason... and you'll find it apparent I'm not a physicist, but reading about fusion research always has me worried. We're basically talking about starting a "controlled" chain reaction at millions of degrees, "like the one on the sun". The sun isn't a nice place, and the sun's fusion happens to be controlled just because it's surrounded by lightyears of vacuum.
-Yeah but we'll have magnetic fields and super coils and stuff. It's totally safe.
-Totally safe?
-Yes, our calculations say its totally safe.
-Your calculations based on current theory? Guess what, theory is a moving target. Just a few years ago you didn't even know if the Higgs particle exists?
- blamestross 6y agoJust to give a little insight, the "containment" isn't about safety, it is about squeezing everything together. It goes away, so does the reaction. It fizzles, it doesn't blow up. The fusion in the sun is essentially gravity+mass applying so much pressure that stuff fuses. Fusion hypothetically is by far the safest means of getting power we will ever work out. Global warming isn't about heat generation. The sun (the free fusions reactor in the sky) sends more heat our way then we could ever hope to produce. It is heat dissipation that is the problem. Greenhouse gasses prevent the sun's heat from dissipating. This is the problem, we will only make it better by stopping greenhouse gas emissions.