wdog

when I talked with a guy at the university of Texas a while ago, he showed me a plot which had a rather linear progression towards the year 2030, as the year in which we would be able to have a net positive energy generation.

Boro Nut

I've never heard of it, but assuming a town with a name that stupid must be in the US it can't be all that far.

Boro Nut

ohwilleke

I would be surprised if there was a commercially viable system in existence in thirty years. I have doubts about whether sustained nuclear fusion is even possible at a scale small enough to be commercially viable. I would be less suprised by a theoretical physicist establishing that the theoretical minimum size of a sustainable nuclear fusion reaction was an output equal to a continual stream of A-bombs (too large to be commercially viable), than I would be by someone actually developing a commercially viable fusion reactor.

emphryio

Hey, but we already have sustained fusion. It's occurring as we speak just 93 million miles away...

ohwilleke

Any what strikes me as significant, is that there is no evidence of small scale sustained nuclear fusion in deep space.

Corwin

Doesn't prove anything.... would we be able to see a small, sustained fusion reaction in deep space? Probably not. Hell we have enough trouble seeing gas giant planets.... much less a sub-planetary sized fusion reaction.

Yes it would be bright but we're talking about enormous distances here.