“Nuclear fusion reactors, if they can be made to work, promise virtually unlimited power for the indefinite future. This is because the fuel, isotopes of hydrogen, are essentially unlimited on Earth. Efforts to control the fusion process and harness it to produce power have been underway in the United States and abroad for more than forty years.” (Lbl.gov, 2000)
Since we have produced mass energy as a marketable item, the question every business mogul, investor, world leader, and simple civilian has been asking is this: When we run out of fossil fuels—coal and oil—as applicable energy sources, what will be used to support our modern civilization? The obvious answer has been right in front of them since its discovery in 1938 and its enormous refinement since. Nuclear Power. As compared to Carbon burning, Uranium-235 produces nearly 60 million times as much energy per atom. Also, splitting Uranium creates no air pollution—theoretically the only air pollution formed from nuclear fission is mining for the resources—while burning Carbon-based fossil fuels creates almost 2300 lbs./MWh (pounds per megawatt hour) of air pollution. Many people have a deep-set fear of nuclear power, most likely
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What should be researched and funded more, however, is nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the type of reaction that takes place inside of the sun that produces its heat and light. Fusion also produces three to four times as much energy as fission per atom. Currently, experiments have not proven nuclear fusion to be applicable, but simulations of possible reactions show that once the minimum energy input is reached, the output will be around 100 times more than the input. On earth, the most amount of electricity produced at one time is about 27 million Amperes. In order to produce a fusion reaction by the most possible method today, inertial confinement, around 60 million Amperes is