The World in 2030

The World in 2030 237
through nuclear fission, 454 a nuclear fusion 455 power station
would produce no radioactivity and no CO 2
. In April 2007
Sandia National Laboratories (a research and development
organisation funded by the US government) announced an
important breakthrough on the road towards building an
experimental fusion reactor:
The concept of nuclear ‘fusion power’ (not ‘nuclear
fission’ as used in today’s nuclear reactors) is the
Holy Grail of energy researchers. Fusion is the atomic
process that powers the Sun and if it were to become
possible to reproduce that process here on Earth humanity
would have a safe, clean, limitless supply of
energy (no radioactivity risk, no carbon output).
On April 24th Sandia National Laboratories announced
it had developed an electrical circuit that
should carry enough power to produce the longsought
goal of controlled high-yield nuclear fusion
and, equally important, do so every 10 seconds. The
device has undergone extensive preliminary experiments
and computer simulations at Sandia National
Laboratories’ Z machine facility.
Fired repeatedly, the machine could be the fusion engine
that could form the basis of an electricity generating
plant by the mid 2020s. 456
By 2030 clean fusion power is likely to be a reality and will be
providing the blueprint for how we will generate our power
for later in the century. In 2005 agreement was reached and
multi-national funds were committed to build the world’s