"The deuterium in a single cubic meter of seawater contains the as much energy as nearly 1,400 barrels of crude oil - enough to supply the civilizaton's energy needs for hundreds of millions of years - until long after the Sun itself has flamed out."
What does that sentence mean? It seems like a claim that the energy of 1,400 barrels of crude oil is enough to sustain civilization for a long time, but that seems implausible to me. Also, off by an order of magnitude on the timeline for the sun burning out.
Whenever I read stuff like this now I start to get paranoid that this is written by GPT-3.
The US alone consumes tens of millions of barrels a day according to the US govt[1] so this claim of "1,400 barrels of crude oil - enough to supply the civilizaton's energy needs for hundreds of millions of years" is very far off the mark.
I can’t possibly believe that this would not already have been pounced on by both scientists and major governments if it were as promising as made out here, sorry.
Likewise. Also, it says there has been little progress, but there are numerous test reactors providing loads of data, ITER is being built, there's a lot of knowledge about how to do this now. It's still tremendously difficult and probably tremendously underfunded, but I'm not sure the claim that "many" have concluded it to be impossible is remotely founded.
But I do have a friend who works at the UK's fusion research centre, obviously she believes in what they're doing!
They're also not suitable for small-scale energy production. You have to put in more energy (to accelerate the ions towards the center) than you can get out (as heat).
Distributed grids with lots of generation points have their advantages but are really hard to manage. Somehow I doubt this is going to go to the point of having a small fusion reactor in every building, so we have to have some kind of grid. Large-scale generation is something we could plug into the grid we already have, which is a distinct infrastructural advantage - if it turns up before we have solar panels on every roof, anyway.
That's true, but I don't think there's a need to be plugged in the grid to enjoy energy generation. There are already a ton of things embarking their own energy generators (every single vehicle to start with) which aren't plugged in any grid. Batteries are also ubiquitous.
So there is definitely a need for small scale to very small scale energy generators, and dismissing a technology because it's unsuitable for large-scale generation doesn't seem wise to me.
What does that sentence mean? It seems like a claim that the energy of 1,400 barrels of crude oil is enough to sustain civilization for a long time, but that seems implausible to me. Also, off by an order of magnitude on the timeline for the sun burning out.
Whenever I read stuff like this now I start to get paranoid that this is written by GPT-3.