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Very cheap energy means cheap war and lots of it. This could be bad.
by ck2 12y ago
Very cheap energy means cheap war and lots of it. This could be bad.
- Tloewald 12y agoOur main reason for war right now is scarce energy. Cheap clean electricity means no-one needs to care about the Middle East for starters — most of the fighting there is superpower proxy fighting — e.g. Assad would be gone if not backed by Russia and China, so no Islamic State. No Oil, no Iraq war x2. No oil, no Hugo Chavez for that matter.
- seren 12y agoI would only be cautiously optimistic : even if our energy problems are solved, the construction of reactors, for example the superconductors, might require some rare materials. The grab for energy could become a grab for minerals. It will probably involved other regions of the world though and change the whole dynamic.
- ZenoArrow 12y agoHugo Chavez is dead, but I agree with the rest of what you say.
- sp332 12y agoCheaper and more plentiful resources means less reason to go to war.
- ck2 12y agoThis isn't Star Trek, this is the United States. We always find a reason to go to war. Or it finds us and we return the favor.
- paulmd 12y agoUnlimited free energy means we eventually global-warm our planet through waste heat. Works out at about 10% the potency of greenhouse gasses per MW.
- sp332 12y agoWow, cool! But couldn't we just use the center of the earth as a heatsink at that point? :P
- orkoden 12y agoIf they can manage to build what they envision we will have tanks with with laser weapons.
- seren 12y agoOn a similar vein, I wonder what are the strategical consequences of such an advance. Assuming it works as described in the article, do you allow the technology to be exported ? Because a whole fleet of fusion air carriers, battleships, submarines and bombers versus a conventional army has plenty of implications in term of autonomy, reach, etc. But on the other hand, there is a such demand for energy everywhere that it would really hard to morally ban all the civilians applications.
- orkoden 12y agoCFR compact fusion reactor (http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compa...) size: 23 X 43 ft. power: 100 MW Energy use of the US (2011): 25,484 TWh Power needed: 2,900 GW = 25,484 TWh / 365 / 24 h * 1000 Number of 100 MW CFRs: 29,000 Civilian use will happen. The benefits are just much to great. There will be regulation and oversight for them. But you won't need one in every truck. It's overkill. As you can see from the above calculation 29 thousand CFRs could cover all the US energy needs. So there will be hundreds of thousands worldwide. It will be hard to keep all of them under control But this would basically solve all of humanities energy problems and decrease CO2 production, and destruction of the environment from mining immensely. Having large amounts of energy available enables new weapon systems to become feasible: high powered lasers, coil guns and rail guns. They can be added to any air, land, or sea vehicle that's above the size of a small truck. Ships are pretty large anyway and aren't as restricted as land or air vehicles when carrying big machinery. Aircraft carriers won't change so much. You can build them a little smaller and their defensive weapons might improve. Nuclear submarines otoh could be built as small as modern diesel powered subs like the Dolphin class. You could build a drone with an extremely long loitering time. If it uses a laser or rail gun, it will also have lots of ammunition. Instead of carrying a couple of hellfire rockets and having to refuel after several hours it could stay in an area for months.