I hope you've not gotten carried away with the nuclear fusion hype last month from California that was credulously lapped up by the MSM. Here's a sobering quote in case you did:
“If these developments prove ultimately successful, we should have quite an inexhaustible supply of fuel to provide for man’s needs in the future.”
This is Sir John Cockroft, director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire, speaking – in 1958.
These "developments" were the Zeta (Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly) programme, which came to nothing. I'd vaguely heard of Zeta, but not of the Perhapsatron and the Stellarator, two early American projects (mentioned in The Times). Someone had a sense of humour at any rate.
The clever money (and happily there is a lot of private money being focused on fusion) seems to be on magnetic confinement rather than the high velocity rifle technology the Americans are using. Expect good news in around 5 years time, I read, with a commercial reactor still some 20 years away. But it's been 20 years away for about 60 years. It seems obvious that I shall not see fusion power, but will my grandchildren? And will it be available soon enough to save us from Climageddon?
Answers on a postcard ...
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