Transmat World: What Will the Post Fusion World Look Like?

Fusion energy technology may happen very soon now - possibly a decade or two. The advantages are an abundant fuel source that will last a million years, no CO2 emissions, very efficient (4 million times that of burning coal), no long term radiation risk, and no chance of a meltdown. We would hope it is cheaper. That will be determined by how much the plants cost and their lifespan and maintenance.

Let’s assume the promise of cheap energy is true, and it is equably distributed. What will it mean to our society? Let’s look back at the last occurrence of cheap energy available to the world in abundance. This was when oil was being discovered all over the world. It gushed from the ground in such quantity, it was arbitrarily assigned an initial value of $2 per barrel. It spurred the development of the internal combustion engine to power cars, trains, ships, and planes. That, in turn, created our modern world and advanced our standard of living by leaps and bounds.

So, would cheap electrical energy simply replace all combustion engine power with electric motors? No. It would not. For cars and planes and ships, there would have to be batteries involved. We are already seeing rare earth elements and other material for battery production become a bottleneck in the supply chain, and we haven’t even begun to switch over to electric.

Unless there is a major breakthrough in battery technology, we will go to a hydrogen economy. The cheap electricity will be used in hydrolysis to separate hydrogen and oxygen. There are two ways hydrogen can then be used.

1. We will burn the hydrogen in combustion engines. The products of that production are water and trace amounts of nitrogen oxides. Even with major breakthroughs in battery technology, hydrogen might be cheaper because it involves only high-pressure tanks. These can be made from carbon fiber and hold thousands of pounds of pressure safely.

2. The other option is to run the hydrogen through a fuel cell. This generates electricity that turns the motor. It is more efficient than a combustion engine running hydrogen, but it generates a lot of heat and is heavy. These last two qualifiers may prevent the use in airplanes, one of our worst CO2 producers.

Whichever way we decide to use the cheap electricity produced by nuclear fusion, it will be a big plus for the world economy, not to mention the environment. Production costs will go down so that wages will go further. Quality of life will rise. Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows everywhere! Okay, maybe not that great. Clean drinking water and a calamity free food supply for eight billion will be the next hurdles. Let’s hope someone has a tech trick up their sleeve for those as well.