I don’t think it’s at all clear yet whether fusion energy is practical within the lifetime of anyone now living. From what I understand we are much much further away from practical commercial use than these excited press releases might lead an outside observer to think. For the past 35+ years, going back to the 80s, I have been seeing these occasional bursts of excitement about fusion and they never seem to lead anywhere
Yes I may have been caught up in just such a burst. I should do a follow-up post more attentive to realistic futurisms happening around nuclear energy.
A post on the near term prospects for large scale expansion of fission would be interesting. Still blows my mind we are retreating from this most practical form of zero-emissions energy
Are the activists really "writing" the World of Renewables? Or is it capital? This was taken up in a recent LRB article on the wind farm supply chain, where politics has completely failed to win any concessions from "green" capital in the UK: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/james-meek/who-holds-the-welding-rod
Since the infrastructure required by renewables is so capital intensive, this shouldn't be surprising. It is less clear what the infrastructure required for fusion looks like and how it might be capitalized on. You get clues from the FT article at what this might look like: a subscriber model where municipalities or corporations rent one of this "shipping container-size" fusion reactors, allowing them to circumvent the grid entirely (splintering infrastructure and creating fusion enclaves). I don't think Peter Thiel is interested necessarily in cheap clean energy provision, but rather a mode of energy production that can produce billionaires at the same clip of other silicon valley sectors.
While fusion is indeed "pretty neat," it's hard not to be cynical and think about how capital will immediately seize on it as a fix, and there will be no attendant disruption to the social order by this incredible new form of "alchemy".
If fusion can't solve the crisis, then windmills definitely can't either. For thinking about total emissions, if fusion power works it won't be monopolizable by the venture capitalists who are currently trying to get in on the ground floor. If it works, then it becomes an energy source in China (which won't need to "rent" from Thiel or whomever), which means mass-production in China is happening via fusion and not via fossils, which sounds like a good outcome.
I don’t think it’s at all clear yet whether fusion energy is practical within the lifetime of anyone now living. From what I understand we are much much further away from practical commercial use than these excited press releases might lead an outside observer to think. For the past 35+ years, going back to the 80s, I have been seeing these occasional bursts of excitement about fusion and they never seem to lead anywhere
Yes I may have been caught up in just such a burst. I should do a follow-up post more attentive to realistic futurisms happening around nuclear energy.
A post on the near term prospects for large scale expansion of fission would be interesting. Still blows my mind we are retreating from this most practical form of zero-emissions energy
Are the activists really "writing" the World of Renewables? Or is it capital? This was taken up in a recent LRB article on the wind farm supply chain, where politics has completely failed to win any concessions from "green" capital in the UK: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/james-meek/who-holds-the-welding-rod
Since the infrastructure required by renewables is so capital intensive, this shouldn't be surprising. It is less clear what the infrastructure required for fusion looks like and how it might be capitalized on. You get clues from the FT article at what this might look like: a subscriber model where municipalities or corporations rent one of this "shipping container-size" fusion reactors, allowing them to circumvent the grid entirely (splintering infrastructure and creating fusion enclaves). I don't think Peter Thiel is interested necessarily in cheap clean energy provision, but rather a mode of energy production that can produce billionaires at the same clip of other silicon valley sectors.
While fusion is indeed "pretty neat," it's hard not to be cynical and think about how capital will immediately seize on it as a fix, and there will be no attendant disruption to the social order by this incredible new form of "alchemy".
If fusion can't solve the crisis, then windmills definitely can't either. For thinking about total emissions, if fusion power works it won't be monopolizable by the venture capitalists who are currently trying to get in on the ground floor. If it works, then it becomes an energy source in China (which won't need to "rent" from Thiel or whomever), which means mass-production in China is happening via fusion and not via fossils, which sounds like a good outcome.