Monday, August 30, 2021
Fusion Future
First, put aside the issue of whether stopping carbon emissions should be a societal priority: If anyone actually wanted to decarbonize electricity production, they could do so now, using nuclear-fission reactors. The French have already done so. The Malthusian movement — a.k.a., “Greens” — opposes this vigorously, because nuclear power threatens to solve a problem they need to have. As soon as fusion power becomes practical, they will oppose it too, for the exact same reason, as in fact the Sierra Club already does.
No, the reason we need fusion is to destroy the Malthusian belief system, which, in my estimation, is the preeminent threat to human civilization today. If one accepts the idea that resources are limited, then all nations are fundamentally enemies, and the only issue is who is going to kill whom in order to claim what’s available. At bottom, this was the source of the major catastrophes of the 20th century. It could cause far worse in the 21st. This mindset, however, is false. We are not threatened by there being too many people. We are threatened by people who think there are too many people.
Fusion power can save us by utterly refuting the limited-resource thesis. The amount of deuterium fusion fuel present in one gallon of water contains as much energy as that produced by burning 350 gallons of gasoline. That’s all water on earth, fresh or salt. A gallon of water from Mars contains deuterium with the energy content of 2,000 gallons of gasoline. Other planets or asteroids may offer more still. So what we are talking about with fusion is unlimited energy. With enough energy, you can do anything. In the entire history of human civilization we have not used up a single kilogram of iron or aluminum. We have just degraded some matter from more convenient to less convenient forms. With enough energy, we can rearrange it back, recycling it faster and faster from one form to another. We will never run out of anything.
