How would fusion power work? Would energy really be free and unlimited?
Fusion power is already free and unlimited; it falls on the earth from the sun at the rate of about one horsepower per square yard, and two billion times as much as the earth gets streams unused into outer space all day and all night. Taking advantage of it, however, requires all kinds of expensive materials and human energy; and building an artificial sun close enough to us to make use of it in concentrated form, and then keeping it from exploding like a hydrogen bomb, will REALLY require a lot of expensive materials and human energy. It’s kind of like water. You could drive to the ocean and pump out as much as you wanted for free and forever and nobody would stop you. But the thing that makes it not so free is when you want the salt taken out, the germs taken out, the odors taken out, and delivered hot and cold on demand and then the waste taken away and cleaned up. That you have to pay for.
See also http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/11134 The JET fusion reactor fuses Deuterium and Tritrium to make Helium, neutrons, and lots of energy. A big problem is that it takes 100 million degrees C to make this happen. All sorts of ways are used to help create that temperature. Once started, the fusion reaction will supply the energy to keep it going. The JET fusion reactor is not big enough to generate enough energy to sustain itself, and a new bigger reactor, ITER, containing a plasma ring about ten meters (about thirty feet) across is planned, this will still be an experimental reactor, and if it is successful, the first fusion reactors to sell energy will be even bigger still. Fusion will not be free – maintaining a structure that complex will take money. It will be limited only by the amount of power each reactor can handle, how many reactors are built, and how fast the fuel can be made available. The amount of energy output that can potentially be produced, however, is so lar
