Posted on 11/11/2022 9:17:16 PM PST by SeekAndFind
As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity.
As Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti details below, one of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion.
In this infographic sponsored by General Fusion, we discuss the benefits of fusion as a clean energy source.
Fusion powers the sun and the stars, where the immense force of gravity compresses and heats hydrogen plasma, fusing it into helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy. Here on Earth, scientists use isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—to power fusion plants.
Fusion energy offers a wide range of benefits, such as:
Both atoms necessary for nuclear fusion are abundant on Earth: deuterium is found in seawater, while tritium can be produced from lithium.
Energy-dense generation like fusion minimizes land use needs and can replace aging infrastructure like old power plants.
There are no CO₂ or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process.
With limited expected regulatory burden or export controls, fusion scales effectively with a small land footprint that can be located close to cities.
Unlike atomic fission, fusion does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. Its radiation profile is similar to widely used medical and industrial applications like cyclotrons for cancer treatment.
Fusion energy is on-demand and independent from the weather, making it an excellent option in a dependable portfolio for power generation.
More than 130 countries have now set or are considering a target of reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050. Meanwhile, global energy demand is expected to increase by 47% in the next 30 years.
While renewables like wind and solar are intermittent and need a baseload source of clean energy to supplement them, fusion, when commercially implemented, could deliver clean, abundant, reliable, and cost-competitive energy.
Wouldn’t a fusion reactor by necessity get as hot as the sun? It seems controlling the heat would be a non-trivial problem.
This should be published on the Babylon Bee web site.
A working fusion generation is decades away. Current fusion experimental reactors are nowhere close to achieving a reliable, long-term fusion reaction that generates net positive electrical energy.
Current fusion reactors use temperatures much higher than the Sun’s temp.
Fusion on the Sun is possible because of an enormous pressure inside the Sun. There is no equivalent on Earth. Ever-higher plasma temperatures require more and more powerful magnets to keep the plasma levitating inside the reactor.
A large amount of input energy is needed to run the process, we are not close to have an energy positive sustainable fusion reactor.
China is building 1100 new coalfired plants; Delhi India is so poluted you cannot see more than 100 yards in the early morning, Beijing is worse. Seems some people like Kerry wants to destroy the USA economically for a one world gov’t by ridiculous ideas that the USA cannot control.
One minor problem - it doesn’t exist.
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