Fusion is the form of nuclear energy that lights and heats the Cosmos. Fusion is the nurturer of life for our Solar System and it is the new paradigm for a world that seeks unity and peace among nations and sustainable equitable energy for all peoples. The successful development of fusion energy is America’s unfinished task; its half-completed challenge.

The world longs for two things now: a way for all of humanity to prosper and a way for humanity to prosper together with our environment. Fusion energy can provide both things: energy that is both much safer and cleaner than present forms of nuclear power and an infinite source of power that can be harnessed anywhere with fuel that can be freely available to all nations.

As a species we are coming to the end of a long road. We in the West have built a way of life on cheap energy provided by fossil fuels. It is a way of life that many of the world’s people now desire, but fossil fuel cannot safely provide it. Fossil fuel burning drives global warming and, if its effects become as severe as some studies suggest, global warming could become an even more serious threat to humanity than poverty. One reason for this is that the major effects of global warming will fall on the tropics, where most of the world’s poor live, in a sad and compounding effect. The other is that global warming could so destabilize food production and water supply that it could lead to worldwide conflict over rapidly dwindling resources.

The Pressure’s On

Human induced climate change, most likely in the form of global warming, is presently controversial but it is not likely to remain so. In less than a decade, perhaps even a few years, the planet-wide effects of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be an undisputed fact and the controversy will center on how to stop it or remediate its effects. As the stark realization of its reality penetrates public awareness, there will be increasing pressure for quick fixes. It is likely that nuclear energy, in some form, will be seen as part of the solution.

It is true that solar and other renewable forms of energy can fill part of the gap, but they are also material and capital intensive and will require many years to implement, and alone they cannot compare with the massive and weather-independent nature of fossil fuels or nuclear power. Our concern is that without the safe, clean form of energy that fusion offers the door will be opened for increasing levels of energy from nuclear fission. France and Japan have demonstrated that a conversion to nuclear energy is possible without economic disruption. However, what about the costs to our environment and safety? In the face of global warming, dare we proceed without an alternative to both fossil fuels and fission nuclear energy? Fusion may also help us soft land in what will ultimately be a solar economy.

A Critical Difference

Fission is easy to generate. Just ask the Japanese nuclear workers who turned a bucket of water into a nuclear reactor by simply dropping some highly enriched uranium into it. Fission was harnessed in both a controlled and uncontrolled manner more than fifty years ago and its nature has remained unchanged. It is a dangerous and dirty form of power.

From a distance the containment domes of its reactors look placid and immovable, but inside a fission reactor’s core is a reaction continually on the edge of running out of control or severely overheating. All the fuel it will use for years is already in one compact pile slowly burning.

Intelligence, either manmade or artificial is required to constantly regulate fission reactions. After the fuel is consumed, what remains is a hellish red-hot mixture of plutonium, uranium and a spectrum of nuclear ashes–highly radioactive, highly toxic, chemically unstable and dangerous for a period longer than recorded human history.

Even more frightening is that the waste and plutonium in spent fuel rods are objects of desire for terrorist organizations since they may be used to inspire terror and confer monstrous power to the few willing to employ them for evil purposes.

As a global economy unifies the world’s peoples, bridging the differences in our cultures and languages, there will also be small groups of alienated people angry that the old patterns in which they trusted have fallen away. It will be terrorism, not world war that is the greatest threat to a global culture, and a fission economy will give the disaffected few the ready means to become global terrorists.

Unlike fission, fusion energy very is hard to achieve. That is its virtue. Fusion requires not a critical mass for energy release, but instead, heat and pressure. Fusion occurs in the center of stars, like our sun. To harness fusion one must create stellar conditions on Earth. Because fusion occurs in a chamber in gaseous plasma at one-millionth the density of air, it is essentially a simple flame, not a pile of dangerous fuel. If the flame surges out of control, it goes out. The only waste it need produce is helium. Because of the difficulty of harvesting fusion, the theft of fusion fuel by a terrorist group would inspire little concern. Outside of its reactor, nuclear energy release is almost impossible.

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