Thursday, June 30, 2005

Nuclear fusion

It's the promise of a cleaner, more powerful energy solution, and out of nowhere comes plans to build a plant that - if successful - would be capable of delivering power at the levels of conventional power stations.

Greenpeace is opposed to the plan, claiming that the cost - 10 billion euros - could fund enough off-shore wind farms to produce electricity for 7.5m households in Europe. They may be right; perhaps nuclear fusion is a white elephant, but considering the possibilities - 1kg of fusion fuel would produce the same amount of energy as 10 million kg of fossil fuel - surely it's better to plan long-term on this?

Of course, if fusion proves to be successful, I guess people won't be rushing to curb their power consumption any time soon...

Full details here.

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