George F. Will: The fusion in our future - The Washington Post:
An excellent article in the potential for fusion energy.
Unlike controlling planetary climate, eliminating "income inequality", or making big government an efficient friend of the people, fusion energy is likely within our grasp. The sun is doing it all the time, the problem is "just a small matter of scale". Can energy producing fusion be done at a VERY reduced scale.
The sun is the size of 1 million earths (10**6), the earth's volume is 10 ** 12 cubic meters, and a rail tank car is like 100 cubic meters.
So it is like a 10 to the 16th miniaturization problem, so not hard to see why it is difficult.
Will makes the point of potentially $30B to do it so it "MUST" be done by government. Interesting. I'm not saying that there is anything "wrong" at all with Gates and Buffet spending their $100B or so on medical advances for the poor (that is the beauty of private wealth, it is THEIRS), but it makes one wonder.
Cheap, clean unlimited energy for everyone on earth for maybe 1/3 of their combined fortunes? Who would you rather have overseeing the project? Gates and Buffet or the guys that brought you Healthcare.gov??
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