(C)old Fusion

Another day, another journalist doling out another equivocal story on the promise of fusion energy technology.This time, its Daniel Lyons and its in this week’s Newsweek:

Maybe this means I’m an optimist. Or even a sucker; a fool. All I know is that when I meet [Edward] Moses, the 60-year-old scientist who runs this place [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and he shows me a tiny pellet, about the size of the multivitamin I take every morning, and swears it will provide an endless supply of safe, clean energy, I want to believe him. It seems so ridiculously simple, so utterly doable. The pellet Moses holds is a model, but the real version will contain a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water. If you blast the pellet with a powerful laser, you can create a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun. Harness that reaction, and you've created a star on earth, and with the heat from that star you can generate electricity without creating any pollution. Forget about nuke plants, coal, oil, or wind and solar. "This is the real solar power," says Moses.

Okay, since fusion is the topic, you'll excuse my a bit a of hyperbole. We don't get fusion articles every day, but having read Charles Seife's book, Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Fusion, I'm inclined to take this latest atom-smashing news as as less than earth shaking. From Booklist's review of Seife's book (written by one Gilbert Taylor):

It’s the energy source of the future, and always will be; that’s the rap on nuclear fusion. Reviewing its development—which at present is embodied in two big-science installations in California and France—Seife clarifies the devilish complexities of containing a fusion reaction. The idea’s tantalizing physical simplicity and the allure of earning unbounded riches from unlimited power has repeatedly tempted scientists, whose excess optimism, hubris, and self-deception propel the technical side of Seife’s account. A seasoned science author (most recently, Decoding the Universe, 2006), Seife shines in explaining how hydrogen’s behavior at solarlike temperatures has so far defeated the two conventional devices for taming it: magnets and lasers. With high-energy physics at an impasse, eccentric claims of room-temperature fusion gained a hearing. Remember the cold-fusion nondiscovery of 1989? Seife writes up two other claims of low-temperature fusion that similarly could not be replicated, the sine qua non of scientific proof. Informed and perceptive, Seife ably melds physics and public policy (fusion has consumed billions of dollars) into a fine presentation for general-interest readers.

Still, its just one book, and I'm just another bloke; this time could be the time right? We'll see.

Till then, there's at least two ways to think about this fusion stuff: (1) it's bullsh*t (2) it's just around the corner. Let's take 'em in order.

1. Fusion is fiction. Seife’s book is nonfiction, and, again, its a good read on this particular perspective. Which begs the question: if the history of fusion science amounts to nearly 7 decades of failure, why does it keep winding up in this week’s Newsweeks? Why do people like the products of the Disney Corporation? (“When you wish upon a star…”). Global warming sucks, running out of oil is no fun, paying ever higher energy bills hurts. When we reluctantly have to admit that life is not fair, at least in the U.S.A., we can pop our copies of Cinderella of into the DVD player. No one likes to hear the word “no.” So, fusion is like science’s version of returning to the womb. Might that explain the billions and billions of tax payer dollars our government has sent chasing after this particular dream? Does that make it okay?

2. Fusion is (more than) da bomb, yo. That sh*t works! Problem solved right? For all intents and purposes that would mean an endless supply of clean energy. With practically endless supplies of cheap, clean energy, what couldn’t we do? Wait. What couldn’t we do? With fusion, no one has a reason to reassess the world’s present hyper-consumptive pattern. That means more car-abetted, sprawling land use, more resources extracted, more chemicals synthesized, maybe a few billion more people than the 9,000,000,000 projected for 2050, which would mean more mouths to feed, more food to grow, more animals to husband, more fish to catch, more trees to fell–a lot more. You could do it all (and die trying). Fusion just might be a fast road to bigger problems that we might be forced to solve without it.

Admittedly, this is just about as rank & speculative as the Newsweek article that started this whole post, but not quite…

When You Wish Upon A Star (Fusion National Anthem)

Music by Leigh Harline / Lyrics by Ned Washington
Performed by Jiminy Cricket (Cliff Edwards)

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue
Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true