Eggplant @ 66: “I strongly support research efforts towards viable controlled fusion technologies.”

So do I. Though we need to be very careful about how the funding is organized — otherwise we end up with the US paying the French to build an expensive white elephant, a la ITER.

What I rail against is the attitude that, until the perfect fusion device is discovered and (many decades later) commercialized and (even more decades later) built on a large enough scale to make a difference, we should just sit on our hands.

WE HAVE A WORKABLE TECHNOLOGY TODAY! Plain old nuclear fission could support a future global population of 9 Billion human beings at first world standards for about two millenia — lots of time to develop the eventual fusion replacement.

The canard of nuclear waste is just that — a quacking duck. Yes, there are technical issues to be resolved with expanded nuclear fission. But a world full of subsidized wind turbines would have problems too — problems which would be insoluble. Much better to have a world full of big nuclear reactors than a world full of hungry people sitting sucking their thumbs until some genius invents the perfect answer.

There is a Biblical story about hiding one’s light under a bushel. We have the light of nuclear power. We have the need for global cheap energy. Let’s dump the bushel of uninformed left-wing extreme environmentalism.