In light of the recent energy breakthrough, what would a future of energy abundance look...
Alex Zylstra, left, is the principal experimentalist, and Annie Kritcher is the principal designer involved in a breakthrough in fusion research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. For the first time, experiments at the National Ignition Facility at the LLNL achieved “ignition,” in which the fusion energy generated equaled the laser energy that started the reaction, a major advancement that may produce bountiful clean energy in the future.
All of this adds up to an ongoing competitive economic advantage for the Lone Star State. In a hydrogen fusion world, however, Texas’ advantage disappears. By analogy, what would be the equivalent life-improving development that would go from science fiction to banal reality within my or my children’s lifespan as a result of abundant and inexpensive energy?
Here’s something else to speculate about: Would we build cities and live in different ways if energy was nearly free? For example, could you do vertical farming within urban areas on tiny acreage — a “farmscraper” in the middle of a dense city, if you will? Intensive energy is needed to replicate the free sunlight used for traditional ground-based horizontal agriculture. But if energy were otherwise nearly free, vertical lamps suddenly make this model viable.
Not only that, but carbon capture from the air is a hoped-for tool to fight climate change. Unfortunately, carbon capture processes use too much energy on a large scale to make economic sense. Currently, the energy needed to do the capturing creates as many emissions as it captures. If massive energy were generated cheaply and cleanly through hydrogen fusion, however, carbon capture possibly becomes a viable tool not merely to slow but to reverse climate change.
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