When you look out at the sky during the day, you see that bright glowing orb that gives us life, we call it the sun. It is constantly pouring energy out, giving life to our planet. It never goes out and it never needs to be restarted. If we could harness that power at it's core we would never need to worry about energy again.
We are starting to try to use the power of the sun via solar panels, but there is a technology on the horizon that will enable us to move past the simple method of catching the suns rays and instead move to using the entire suns power.
Enter nuclear fusion power, It's the same process that powers the sun, and it's clean and there are no emissions. Scientist have been painstaking trying to recreate a miniature sun in their labs for decades and now they are finally close to achieving their goal. By using a magnetic field to contain the fusion reaction and using multiple high powered lasers to focus on a single spot to create enough energy to start the engines, scientists say that the first working prototype could be up and running by 2020 and the energy would be harness and commercially available by 2030.
I love this idea, but I also worry that creating a miniature sun on the surface of this planet could be catastrophic, What if containment fails? What are the safeguards in place in case of an emergency. Chernobyl would look like a summer vacation compared to the devastation a miniature sun would do to our planet if it went rogue. But I'm not a scientist, I understand the idea of fusion power, but I have absolutely no idea on how I would even start to make one work or how to install safeguards.
I have to put my faith in the genius men and women out there that know what they are doing and hope that they have more precautions in place than they need. Having safe, clean, cheap energy on hand that could power the entire world seems like its almost worth the risk.
Scott Goerz
