"Renewable Wave Power"
Out of context: Reply #12
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- detritus0
The belief that fusion power produces no waste is a misconception - although it is fair to say that, compared to normal fission reactions, the quantity and long-term toxicity is massively reduced. Fusion does, however, produce radioactive waste.
Given that the sun is an existent fusion reactor on a scale orders of magnitude beyond what humanity could possibly imagine building for the next few thousand years, it would be prudent to make use of the vast quantities of radiated energy 'wasted' as it floods past out planet. Also, if our long-term evolutionary strategy is to move beyond Earth, it would further make sense to monetise the conquest of space in the near term by the traditional economic bound of capitalising on a new energy resource.
Orbital platforms have numerous other benefits - they could supply energy to any point on the globe via microwaves, using currrent technology, with only a local infrastructure requirement (receiver dish). When mass-produced, they are relatively cheap, with an effectively infinite volume to grow into, with no effect on Earth real estate. Indeed, this is one of the principle reasons behind the current Lunar X-prize, as sponsored by Google - the development of lunar resources, to extract materials for energy production. Not only the speculative harvesting of Helium3 (for fusion) but also to practically extract and develop silicates, to produce solar panels. These could be easily and cheaply launched from low gravity lunar orbit - more so than from multiple Earth launches. Given mid-term technological projections - this could probably be done mostly automatically by robots. If not, Earth launches are always coming down in price, with the fuels used coming increasingly from non-fossil sources.
We already have serious near-term investigation of this resource by - the Japanese, Indian and Canadian governments as well as the US's Pentagon (mooted by the Air Force as a solution to providing energy to weapon/transport platforms in the middle of nowhere in Iraq, etc).
Fact is, many tens of billions have already been spent on fusion, with negligible practical pay-off. Had the same investment been put into space-based solar - we'd already have more energy produced with the infrastructure in place to develop it as an on-going concern.
It is interesting to note that by the metric accepted by some of the world's brightest scientific luminaries, the next advanced civilisation level (so called 'Type II', on the 'Kardashev Scale' (we're currently not even Type I)) would be expected, by extension of our current physical models, to trap all of their home star's energy by the creation of a 'Dyson Sphere'. Obviously, this is a highly long term view - but one that is entirely in-keeping with the current progenitive speculation of sending solar panels to float up above. ie. (because I lost myself there) - if an ultimate measure of success is to trap all of the sun's energy - we should start by trapping the sun's energy.
Whilst the above is somewhat sci-fi - it's actually quite achievable and practical. More so, across all but long-term timescales, than fusion is.