Personally, I think if it does happen it'll be well over 50 years into the future. I still don't entirely understand this whole process, but the idea of Money Energy For Nothing doesn't quite sit right for me.
Well, its no more 'free energy' than petrol is 'free energy'. Hydrocarbons could be considered free energy, because the energy they give out is a net gain, despite all the mining and refining. So while its free energy, its running out so we won't have 'free energy' for much longer, and that's before the potential adverse climate effects of combusting the stuff are considered.
All we are doing is releasing potential chemical energy stored in the hydrocarbon molecules bonds, to power the world. In much the same way, hydrogen fusion is releasing heaps of energy of hydrogen nuclei, stored as mass.
You have probably heard of the famous E=mc^2 equation. It tells us that energy and mass are directly interchangeable. Well that's exactly what happens in hydrogen fusion. Mass can be considered as an extremely dense form of energy, fusion turns all that mass into energy. The energy release is several orders of magnitude greater than the energy release of hydrocarbon combustion. I seem to remember reading that one gram of mass would release the energy equivalent of Tsar (or some other large nuclear blast) and we don't exactly have a shortage of hydrogen on our planet.
Hydrogen fusion is the reason the sun shines, if we could harness a fraction of that energy, that's our energy problem solved (for now
). So that's all we have to do, easy.
Except as I stated earlier in this thread (when I didn't know much about the topic), fusion needs around 144 000 degrees celcius before it can occur, and containing that much heat isn't easy, also harnessing that energy into usable energy isn't easy either. Currently it takes more energy to initiate, contain and sustain fusion than we can currently get out of it. With further refining of the technique, and greater research, the process
may actually yield a net gain of energy, once there is a a net gain we do have 'free energy' all we loose is a bit of the planets mass. Plenty to go round though
.
Interesting fact, the sun losses 40 million tonnes of mass per second due to fusion
hopefully our apatite for energy will be a little more satiable.
{edit} I put 40-50 years last year, after reading up a bit, I am optimistic that we are only around 30 years away. I suspect greater funding will greatly improve the rate at which we progress, and a potential impending energy crisis will no doubt fuel such progression. There is still a case of
if, but things are looking up, the first step is the laser fusion experiment in California, that turns on soon.
