Editor,
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’ s scientific breakthrough on nuclear fusion “ignition” on Dec. 5, 2022, is man’s greatest scientific discovery to date. That man has harnessed the power of the Sun so soon was both unexpected and mind boggling. Nuclear fusion has no emissions, toxic waste or risk of nuclear proliferation. It will lead to an enormous increase in world living standards with inexpensive energy because energy is bedded in the cost of every product and service.
The numbers are astounding — the cost to build a fusion power plant is high but will be more than offset by cheap fusion energy that has an energy density 4 million times greater than fossil fuel and even far more than wind and solar energy. Ironically the research money for this came out of our military’s nuclear weapons budget intended for ways to test nuclear weapons without exploding them.
Ed Kahl
Woodside
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(2) comments
Mr. Kahl – I haven’t kept up with this discovery and while I hope the results are true, before we can claim the onset of inexpensive energy, has this experiment been independently repeated with similar results? Are we “receiving” more energy than we actually put into creating it? I’ll wait until results are confirmed by someone other than our current government. For all we know, their measurements may have been based on uncalibrated instruments.
It would be a huge win if we can get fusion on the grid in my lifetime (I’m 41). Until then, let’s increase deployment of clean tech to buy time and avoid crossing climate tipping points.
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