Nuclear fusion promises to be a clean and virtually limitless energy source, but time is running out to solve the climate crisis.
Great—but with renewables like solar and wind already ramped up to fend off the 1.5 degree deadline and greenhouse gas emissions hopefully slashed in half by 2030, what will be the point?
"Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of electricity. But by the time you're trying to address the last 10 percent of electricity production they're not the cheapest because there's a large premium that needs to be added for managing intermittency. So there's still a lot to do there.""We know that we can do some impact positively with renewables, no question. But we also know that they can't do 100 percent," he told.
"It's not actually just about solving climate change. It's about solving climate change whilst maintaining people's living standards. And that's why we need every technology we can get."Hawker thinks First Light Fusion can have its projectile-based fusion reactor—which produces fusion by kinetic force—on the grid and making a difference to climate change by the 2040s.
"What ideally happens is we maximize solar and wind as soon as we can in areas where it makes sense, and we have to operate on improving efficiencies on the grid so we reduce the need for new power plants, or can turn some off today that are very polluting," he said."And hopefully, very quickly, you're ramping fusion. And if we have, at the end of the decade, the proof in the pudding—if it works—then it's a race to deploy at scale.
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