Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
They have not listened and they have reduced their cred-
ibility once again. I hope that their analysis leads to an
understanding of the problem and that NIF or one of the
other approaches can reach its goal.
We will have to wait a long time for ITER to try to get
the fusion reaction to occur on a sustained basis. The
participants in the project believe that they understand
plasma stability issues, but then the inertial people
believed they understood their issues, too. We will have
to wait and see.
Both approaches are high-risk but have a reasonable
payoff if they can manage to make affordable electricity,
and that is a very big if. Fusion fans claim that their
system has such advantages that it is worth doing even
if the cost of electricity generation is higher than alter-
natives. I have never believed that, and determining
the cost of electricity from fusion is going to have to
wait until the conditions for fusion are reached whatever
they may be. Incidentally, there are two companies,
one American and one Canadian, that are taking differ-
ent approaches to fusion and are entirely privately
funded. Stay tuned.
.
Nuclear Power as Part of the Solution
If we continue on the business-as-usual course, global
emissions are projected by
to be about
billion tons
per year producing
billion tons of CO
, double that of
today. A big piece of that comes from the generation of
electricity where coal is now the king of fuels. Much of the
electricity supply has to be what is called
“
base-load
