So, if it's cheap and clean energy we want, we should clear the way for fission energy start-ups.
As venture capitalists, we at Polaris might have invested in one or two of these fission-energy start-ups.
Rather than create electricity by heating water and turning a turbine, Wilson's new reactor would use nuclear fission to produce energy from molten salt.
The good news is that the big names in nuclear energy -- like Areva, Hitachi, General Electric and Toshiba -- have recently been joined by a bevy of high-tech start-ups seeking to develop advanced nuclear-reactor designs for both fission and fusion energy production.
The energy release from nuclear fission is roughly a million times greater per unit weight than fossil fuels, which is why nuclear fission is such a compelling long term energy source.
FORBES: Explainer: What Caused The Incident At Fukushima-Daiichi
Moses says that together with emerging laser amplification technology that is less power hungry, and the huge energy gain from the fission reaction, a combo reactor would deliver 200 times the energy it consumes.
Reactors that exploit nuclear fission (in which energy is generated by splitting uranium atoms) have produced thousands of tonnes of spent fuel and other radioactive by-products.
Think of nuclear fission: it generates useful energy but if it runs out of control you get a cataclysmic explosion.
ECONOMIST: Why Germany seems not to want a quick fix for the euro crisis
Nuclear fission avoids using large quantities of fossil fuel for energy but is very contentious because it produces radioactive waste.
BBC: Impact of global warming may be severe and wide-ranging
Fusion is the process of forcing the nuclei of atoms so close together that they fuse into a nucleus of a new element. (Fission, of course, is the opposite: energy produced by splitting nuclei.) The new, fused nucleus weighs less than the original two.
Thermoelectric coupling uses heat from the decay of a radioactive fuel (as opposed to the full-scale nuclear fission which powers a reactor on Earth) as its energy source.
ECONOMIST: A more efficient way to make electricity in spacecraft
However, while mining helium-3 from the moon will be one challenge, extracting energy from it is another, as it relies on nuclear fusion, rather than fission used in today's nuclear reactors.
As for the timescale, fusion certainly wouldn't be available in the short-term, but the problem of providing viable energy sources is not going to get easier even if conservation, CO2 sequestration, fission and renewables are more widely used, and there are currently no other large-scale options beyond the 20-50-year timeframe.
Today, most alternative energy technologies that are discussed--wind, solar, tides, waves, clean coal, nuclear fission and, perhaps one day, fusion--are useful only for making electricity.
应用推荐