The idea of green renewable energy as currently pushed by proponents is failing. The mainstream media runs an echo chamber that is like a church. One only hears the good Word and fire and brimstone for those that ignore it. But, dig into the numbers and real costs, look at those going with wind and solar, think Australia and their blackouts, and the scale of what is needed. It is not going to work.
Fusion power offers the true attainable green dream. Burn hydrogen, as the sun does, get helium. A gram of hydrogen is the equivalent of 10 tons of coal. Fusion is constant. No batteries needed. No down time on no wind days. Fusion can happen at night too, solar’s problem.
Have you looked at the batteries needed for wind generators? Depending on location, some generators will need about 3,000 refrigerator size Tesla batteries to supply power in little and no wind conditions. That is 3,000 per individual generator. How green is it to cover the landscape with wind mills killing birds and batteries?
So, what is the state of fusion and when will my phone have a fusion generator in place of a battery?
A good article on the current state of fusion is Fusion Power Is About to Become a Reality (Jan 2019). You’ll hear different timelines and projections depending on who you talk to and where they are thinking fusion will be put to use. The military apps will arrive first, think aircraft carriers, and civilian apps later. Civilian is like 2030.
Don’t expect the media and politicians to jump on this wagon. There is no money in fusion, well… like there is in carbon taxes and government subsidies for wind and solar. Free market companies will race to replace expensive wind, solar, nuclear, gas, oil, and coal with cheap water.
Politicians will attempt to limit who can build fusion plants to keep the price of energy high… well, the story will be to keep you safe. They will tell us we can’t have a plant blowing up like Chernobyl. They will count on the media supporting them and you not knowing enough about fusion to know they are lying.
Fusion happens inside a sun where gravity compresses hydrogen to the point the atom collapses allowing another electron to be jammed (fused) into the shell forming helium. The energy release on collapse is huge.
We can’t manipulate gravity, yet. So, we use a magnetic field and heat from lasers to collapse the hydrogen atom. This is the HOT fusion idea. Cold fusion is a hypothesis and not currently feasible. If the vessel holding the hydrogen is too weak, physically or magnetically, and containment is lost the result is hot hydrogen and helium gas escaping. No nuclear explosion.
Inexpensive energy is coming. Provided the free market survives.
Update 2/2/2019 – See The January Climate Follies to see how wind is failing and would create a crisis if it were the sole source of power for a region.