Reply #115: Your understanding of what I posted is flawed

[DRoseDARs]

"Wind, solar, tidal and geothermal are certainly the best options (on Earth) for power generation in terms of their impact on the environment"



>>>You seem to have ignored this part of my post. Difficult to respond to you if you just copy/paste a repetition of what I already said without adding any of your own words.



"but in terms of our power needs the future almost certainly belongs to nuclear fusion technologies (that's FUSION, not fission; two very different animals)"



>>>I rightly make a distinction between FISSION and FUSION here and later, your subscription/pay-to-read report appears not to (I don't know if it does or not, I'm not a subscriber nor am I paying for a copy of the report) and the freely available supplementary data does not. It's the most frustration thing when talking about nuclear technologies: People hear the word "nuclear" and tune everything else out. Fusion is NOT fission. Hell, even some fission technologies are not what most people typically think of as fission technologies. People hear "nuclear" and think "Three Mile Island and Chernobyl" and that's the end of their thought process.



"Wind is meaningless in space and on most bodies with atmospheres (Mars has very high wind speeds, but a very thin atmosphere; atmospheres heavier than Earth's will destroy turbines in seconds) and the sun's energy gets weaker and weaker the further out you go because it is more spread out (less of the energy hits the panel). This is why probes we send out are often nuclear-powered (not in the same way as your friendly neighborhood nuclear power plant, mind you ;) ) because solar is just utterly worthless that far out. Fusion is a much safer and more efficient nuclear process and there are several proof-of-concept projects being planned or built right now, different technologies competing for bragging rights to being the first to produce a viable model for commercial production."



>>>As fusion power generation takes root, it can produce far greater amounts of electricity on smaller footprints than any given solar/wind/tidal plant could ever hope to produce, on Earth or off. Barring exotic forms of energy (matter/antimatter, zero-point energies, micro black holes, magic), utilizing fusion is in the cards as our main source of large-scale electricity production.