Good news Wednesday: Advances towards nuclear fusion

Hello everyone! Today we revisit one of my obsessions: humanity's quest to develop cheap, limitless, and clean energy, the same energy which powers the stars.

I came across this article the other day and posted it on Bluesky. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the company featured in this article, hopes to have a functioning fusion plant in Virginia by the early 2030s.

"2030s" is ironic: the joke has been that nuclear fusion is "just thirty years away"; we've been saying that for nearly a century. But it seems that this time even thirty years is too conservative. Not only are Western companies racing against each other; they're also racing against China. However, I think this is unnecessary; this is not a zero-sum game. Once someone achieves the holy grail of getting more energy out of a fusion reaction than is put in, the technology will not stay confined to one company or one country. 

This is the final test: a fully-sustainable fusion reaction. And, unlike with nuclear fission, there is no radioactive waste with which to deal. Even the threat of a meltdown is not germane. Fusion is quite simply the best chance we have at halting and reversing climate change.

Fusion is also the best chance we have of send autocratic oil states to the dustbin of history. There will be no more reliance on Russia or Saudi Arabia. Their wealth based on their oil and gas extraction will evaporate, making them what they should be: second-rate powers without the ability to hold the world hostage to their whims.

A cheap, safe, clean, and inexhaustible source of energy will be as momentous in human civilization as the Agricultural Revolution which began twelve thousand years ago and led to the rise of settlements and then cities and civilization as we now know it. Wars for energy resources will become obsolete. And with the reversal of climate change, we can also ameliorate competition for other resources, such as water and minerals. Fusion energy will make technologies like water desalination feasible. 

And then of course, for someone like me who was born the day before humans first walked on the Moon, there's space travel. Fusion engines on starships will open up the solar system and its almost-infinite mineral wealth. Asteroid mining will not be a matter of science fiction, but of fact. The pressure this will relieve from mineral extraction on Earth will help the planet heal from the impositions humans have placed on it. In essence, we will go from an economy of scarcity to one of abundance.

The question is: Will we have the wisdom to build on this achievement of human wisdom and grow as humans? Will we be able to put aside our tribalism and our fears of the Other? What use are borders when someone in Nairobi can have as decent a life as someone in New York, unshackled from the chains which have weighed down humanity in fear and violence for its entire recorded history? We already see that regular people simply want to live their lives, educate their children, and build for the future. Will they tolerate so-called "leaders" who want to keep the old systems in place? 

This is our chance at that Star Trek future. I don't think I'm overstating what an epochal change achieving fusion energy will be. We will be a Kardashev Type I civilization, able to harness all the energy available on the planet, without destroying it. This is why I'm eternally optimistic; some humans do have a death wish and simply want to see the world burn. But the vast majority do not. If we can wait a few more years, if we can not destroy ourselves, we will finally return to the stars from whence we came. As Carl Sagan famously said: We are all made of star-stuff.