A path to a more sunny future?

Introduction and summary

Working within five years?
One of the private enterprise efforts

According to "Nuclear fusion is 'a question of when, not if'," scientists remain optimistic that efforts by international and national government groups, along with those of innovative private companies, are making progress towards solving the substantial technical difficulties that have previously prevented the development of cost effective fusion energy. Although great progress has been made in renewable energy sources, it is reported that fusion, which combines hydrogen atoms in the type of atomic reaction that powers the sun, would still play a role in reducing human reliance on polluting fuels that contribute to global warming while at the same time avoiding the radiation and other dangers of nuclear energy that works by splitting uranium atoms.

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Response: What is your opinion?

Fusion - bringing solar
power to Earth

In my own lifetime, science has made enourmous progress in not only understanding the world around us, but in giving us the tools to control it. Of course, this has led to problems, since it is such things as our growing knowledge of how to turn oil into useful energy since the industrial revolution that has created the global warming that now poses a serious threat to human life as we known it, although it won't harm the planet, which will carry on happily whether human beings exist or not. Also contributing to global warming are the scientific advances that have boosted the population of the planet to almost seven billion, more than three times what it was only a century ago. All those scientific advances in medicine, in food production, and so on are also now adding to the pressure on our planet, not least because we love to kill animals for their tasty muscles, which is also disastrous for the environment. 

I remember when I was in high school reading about nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. By then nuclear fission was already a reality, with atomic bombs having been used to bring peace to the world, but the excitment was that fusion could solve our energy problems forever. Sadly, that never happened. But the scientists and engineers have continued to work on it, and if the article is right, it might be a reality within the next five to ten years, which I think is exciting. Atomic bombs stopped  lot o wars because they were such an extreme threat to human existence, and if we can make fusion work, there would be so much energy available, so much clean energy, that we would be able to do pretty much anything we wanted to without any harm to the environment. In fact, I think we would have the energy to fix a lot of the harm we have already done. 

Because it offers so much, I think that the money spent on it should be greatly increased. If I were a national leader, I would pour not mere hundred of millions of dollars into it, but billions of dollars to get it working as soon as possible. It would light the way to a brighter future for humanity, where we did not have to go to war over oil or other resources because there would be an abundance of clean energy available for everyone, everywhere, at every time. 

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Question for your classmates

How do you think that world might change if effectively limitless energy became available through successful nuclear fusion?