A recent posting I read was on a technology (carbon capture and sequestration) that seems to promise more than it can deliver within a time period that could help the planet avoid some of the worst ravages of climate change.
As one reader, David Neubert, from New York City, said in his comment: “I’m starting to know what you mean about thinking that real solutions will never come.”
Perhaps same could be said of nuclear fusion, an exciting but extraordinarily ambitious technology that is based on harnessing the same form of energy that powers the sun. Fusion may take until mid-century to commercialize. But the lengthy wait is not stopping proponents of fusion technology from linking it with efforts to save the planet.
This week, Werner Burkart, the deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the first meeting of the board of ITER, the multi-billion dollar fusion project at Cadarache in the south of France, that it was critical “to push forward with efforts to make fusion technology a possibility in a world desperately in search of clean energy that’s abundant and without carbon dioxide.”
ITER, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is one of the most ambitious scientific quests ever undertaken. It involves six partners, the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea — with the Europeans contributing about half the costs. The structure will involve construction of 18 massive magnets, each weighing about 450 tons, to drive the reactor.
But critics (and opponents of nuclear power) say ITER is something of a white elephant, likely to suck down more power from the French electricity grid than it ever will produce. Critics also say that massive technological projects like ITER distract from proven ways of producing power from renewable sources at a time when climate scientists are warning that emissions must peak by the next decade, and start declining soon thereafter.
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