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The nuclear option isn't political expediency but scientific necessity |
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(David King, the U.K.'s chief science advisor, has played an important role in moving toward a positive decision on the ITER burning plasma fusion experiment. He summarizes his thoughts about climate change and world energy strategies in an interesting commentary in the Guardian. - jw)
To save ourselves from the worst effects of climate change, we are going to need a full range of sources of power
David King
Friday December 16, 2005
The Guardian
I feel both encouraged and dispirited by recent developments in climate change. Encouraged because the Kyoto treaty was finally ratified in February, and over the last few weeks politicians around the world have been meeting in Montreal to discuss their countries' commitments to reduce damaging greenhouse emissions. The conference agreed to implement the Kyoto protocol and, crucially, to initiate processes to set new targets beyond 2012. Dispirited because the latest scientific information tells us that these decisions have not come a moment too soon.
(King goes on to note specifically with respect to fusion)
...Alternative technologies and energy-efficiency gains such as these will certainly help the UK to achieve our target of reducing emissions by 60% by 2050. But we will also need to look at other low-emissions ways of making energy. I believe it is now the time to look again at nuclear energy. While I have high hopes for new zero-emissions technologies in the future, efficient nuclear-fission power stations are already available. (I am also hopeful that fusion power stations, without the problems of nuclear-waste disposal, will emerge over the coming three or four decades.)
You can see King's full text at the Guardian site.
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Fusion energy is arguably one of the most important and rewarding research challenges of the 21st Century. Fusion power produces no troublesome emissions, is safe, and has few credible proliferation concerns. It creates no long-lived waste and runs on fuel readily available to all nations. The issue for the U.S. and other nations is not whether, but how fast to proceed with a serious investment in a fundamentally new source of energy for the future. |
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Read more...
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 In a joint press release on Dec. 6th, the ITER partners welcomed India to the to the ITER venture as a full Party. This was an historic step which becomes even more meaningful if one refers back to Predhiman Kaw's Artsimovich Lecture in 1992 (FUSION POWER, WHO NEEDS IT? ). Kaw, who is now Director of India’s Institute for Plasma Research, was remarkably prescient in his arguments, many of which are still relevant today, in the context of what has happened over the last 15 years.
In a mirror of the rapidly developing overall economies of China and India, the fusion research efforts in both of those nations have grown to become meaningful partners in the world fusion community. Both China and India, in addition to Korea, are constructing state of the art superconducting tokamaks, similar to the U.S. Tokamak Physics Experiment (TPX), a project that was a casualty of funding cuts for U.S. fusion research in 1996. All three of these newer players in fusion research have received increasing government support for fusion as a long-term solution for energy needs.
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