04-24-2008, 06:44 PM
Quote:I believe that had we invested more into fission and fusion research throughout the last three decades we'd be nearly free of coal, and fossil fuels entirely by now with far less pollution and nuclear waste than we have today. So, if you believe that we face environmental catastrophe now due to pollution and green house gases, thank the political forces that have impeded scientific progress for the past thirty years. I still have my heavily dog eared copy of "The War Against the Atom" from 1982, which I would recommend to anyone interested in a scientific analysis of energy and it's potential sources.
Fusion will be the preferred technique for our future energy demands. However it is not easy. Maybe it is even practically impossible to build a working fusion reactor.
But unlike what you are suggesting there is a lot of research done in this field, where a lack of well educated and smart people might be a bigger problem than just money.
Seeing how a good mathematician can make millions per year if he starts working as an investment banker, science funding can never be high enough to attract as many good people as we would like to.
Being an absolute supporter of much more science funding, I don´t believe that with more funding we would have working fusion reactors at this moment.
The idea of this Dr Rubbia seems a bit far fetched to me, but I sure hope researchers can get investors and politicians so far to fund the search for a working reactor.
Nuclear power as it is used now is not a viable option I think. Reports pop up regularly that the waste disposal turns out to be more difficult and expensive than we thought, plus the fact the uranium is also hardly a endless energy source.