News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Observation of zero resistance above 100 K in Pb₁₀₋ₓCuₓ(P... by coderenegade on Thursday August 03, 2023 @09:00PM (#36994123)
I think that's reasonable, though I'm skeptical that fusion would solve climate change even if we perfected it tomorrow. It still has the issue of radioactive waste at end-of-plant-life since all of the critical parts are irradiated. It also doesn't solve the issue of chemical processes that release a good chunk of total CO2 emissions, and are largely independent of energy production.

I think the thing solves our environmental issues is actually industrial electrolysis, because then it doesn't really matter what your power source is, you have a means of decarbonizing chemical processes, and an incentive to commoditize carbon. Essentially, waste would have value, because it's a cheap source of carbon that can be used with hydrogen to create methanol, dme, etc. Not to mention, hydrogen salt cavern storage is proven at scale for 4 decades now to the tune of 350GWhs or so, and it lets us decarbonize agriculture and cement production.

I guess fusion might help make energy cheaper for these processes, but I don't really see that it matters if they're powered by fission or wind and solar. But if we can't get electrolysis cheap enough, then I don't see these processes being decarbonized until we're almost out of fossil fuels.

My 2c, anyway.

There are no comments on this comment yet.