Do you know if that fusion reactor will look into heium-3 and deterium fusion. It supposedly has great energy potential and creates no radiation, the only problem beeing if we don't want to get our helium-3 from disabled nukes, we'll have to ge tit from space.
Jerome, here's a book recommendation for you: Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets by John S. Lewis. It's one of my favorite non-fiction books. Honestly we could use to revise some of the treaties that govern property (or guaranteed lack of) in space. And we ought to subsidize commercial exploitation of space too..
Gee, I'm rather stream of consciousness today.... Disclaimer: Despite my user name, I'm not French. I just love French culture and am a former Chem major.
At least I hope that the massive capital costs of fusion will mean that it will be expensive (and therefore valued more), at least for the first few generations of plants...
The input of energy by the Sun into the Earth's troposphere runs at about (1367 W/m^2) x Pi x (6,380,000 m)^2 = 174,807,372,360,000,000 W ~= 175,000,000 GW. In equilibrum, energy is reflected by clouds and surface or radiated off into space at the same rate.
Yearly total energy consumption is now about 450 exajoules (10^18 Joules) per year. Translated into watts (i.e. divided by the number of seconds a year), this is on average an energy consumption (and, in the end effect, heat input into the climate) at a rate of 5,700,000,000,000 Watts, or 5,700 GW.
So even if there is an increase by one or even two orders of magnitude, I don't see a significant global warming effect. Local warming is another thing. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
