While the world continues to discover new sources of oil and natural gas, some of the signs of peak oil, such as Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar oilfield reaching its peak, continue to put a damper on future expectations for oil-based economies.
IndustryTap has written a number of articles on fusion. IndustryTap guest writer Dr. Matthew J. Moynihan wrote “Venture Capital Examines Fusion Research,” “US Fusion: An Open Letter to Representative Alan Grayson,” and “US Fusion Funding: A Call for Change.” Moynihan favors a type of fusion called the Polywell Reactor as extensively documented in this blog. And our writer Nidhi Goyal recently wrote “Germany’s Revolutionary Nuclear Fusion Reactor Produced Its First Hydrogen Plasma…the Energy Source of the Future” about the stellarator nuclear fusion reactor. The fact is that fusion energy research is taking place all over the world and progressing, but as the article “Why Nuclear Fusion is Always 30 Years Away” states, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome.
While “The Slow Death of Nuclear Power and the Rise of Renewables” seems to be upon us, if a viable fusion energy technology is not available soon, countries like Germany may go back on their decision to eliminate nuclear fission or old style nuclear power plants.
This is because the demand for energy in Germany is high and its installed clean energy capacity is not large enough to meet demand. The only alternative available to the Germans is to build more coal plants or to artificially raise prices to cut energy demand.
Currently, the world seems awash in natural gas, but when oil and natural gas production significantly declines, if nuclear fusion isn’t available, the only alternative, besides nuclear fission or old style nuclear power plants, will be coal to liquid processing to create liquid fuels for transportation. This would be expensive enough to take nuclear fission off life support.
The following YouTube video, “Fusion Energy Explained – Future or Failure,” suggests that if the challenge of creating fusion energy is not solved, then the world will have to fall back on existing resources.
