I have written quite a bit about my concern that civilization has been getting less civilized in recent times. One reason, I believe, involves energy. I honestly believe that the quality of our lives largely depends upon the economy, which itself largely depends upon energy and technology factors (in the long run, anyway). <\/p>\n
Sure, there is plenty to say for love and spirituality and social interaction and self-actualization, for artistic expression, and for constitutions and elections and due process. History is made by men and women, not by guns, germs and steel. And it’s wonderful to have info at our fingertips with I-pads and I-phones. But when the economy goes bad permanently and people scramble just to find their next meal and make it to the next morning (e.g., the early Middle Ages in Europe), all the spiritual realization and artwork and human rights stuff gets tossed overboard. Complex government and social arrangements collapse, replaced by simple and crude arrangements (e.g., Sharia and other religious cults).<\/p>\n
I really believe that we’re moving closer to such a situation, largely driven by the disappearance of cheap, portable energy sources (such as oil was for us through most of the 20th century). Unless some unexpected leap in effectiveness occurs, green energy is not going to fill the gap. And forget about nuclear going anywhere. We need an industrial-strength energy technology to get the world economy back to the glory years of cheap, easy-to-find oil, not a lot of niche applications that work only in limited circumstances and still aren’t much of a bargain (such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass fuels). The brightest hope for such a “big generator” of power for the past 50 years has been nuclear fusion (the reaction which powers the sun). Unfortunately, since the 1960’s practical fusion energy has remained stuck on the horizon (repeatedly said to be 20 years away).<\/p>\n
The mainstream approaches to fusion technology are extremely intricate and expensive; if they ever can be harnessed for power generation, they will require huge, complex facilities that make today’s nuclear plants look like a Model T (a better analogy might be an Edsel). One approach involves shooting hundreds of lasers at little pellets, over and over again. Thus far, $3.5 billion has been spent on at the National Ignition Facility in California trying to develop an economically viable version of this. The other approach involves a superconducting tokamak, a high-energy magnetic “bottle” harnessing super-hot plasma gasses. There is an international project in France called the ITER getting underway to make something out of this method; it is expected to cost $20 billion. These projects have made for interesting and remunerative careers for various scientists and engineers. However, the tokamak and the pellet laser just don’t sound to me like the kind of thing that changes history. For that, a “black swan” is needed — something that will be unexpectedly cheap, fast and (relatively) simple.<\/p>\n
Some years ago, I thought that the fusion black swan was coming over the hills, in the form of cold fusion. I wrote about my hopes<\/a> for cold fusion seven years ago (hard to believe I’ve been blogging for so long). But unfortunately, most of the alleged breakthroughs turned out to be nothing more than allegations, e.g. Fleischmann-Pons from the mid-eighties. Since then there have been various other announcements about “alternative fusion” breakthroughs (Wikipedia says<\/a> that the term “cold fusion” should be limited to the Fleischmann\u2013Pons claim of nuclear fusion at room temperature using a tabletop setup; I thus use the term “alternative fusion”<\/strong> to designate anything outside the mainstream tokamak and laser pellet approaches). There was one earlier this year<\/a> from some Italian scientists regarding a hydrogen-nickel reaction, which mainstream scientists are already casting doubt upon. So, no hope for alternative fusion anytime soon?<\/p>\n Fusion is a funny thing scientifically, involving quantum inter-atomic interactions that we still don’t completely understand. Experiments have proven that there are other ways to cause it besides hot gas compression by magnetic forces (tokamak) or laser beams. I just read an article on the Scientific American web site about three more alternative technologies that certain people believe will lead to usable fusion. As is typical for Sci Am, which can be a bit pompous in its role as defender of the scientific mainstream, the article<\/a> is titled a “Skeptical Look” at what they call “Wild Fusion Schemes”. Obviously, the Sci Am owners and authors disagree with the people backing these “schemes”. <\/p>\n