Bokat-lindell, Spencer. “Could Fusion Arrive in Time to Solve Climate Change?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/opinion/fusion-climate-change-nuclear.html.

 

Fusion is often regarded as a cleaner, more promising alternative to nuclear energy, but will it come fast enough? Fusion is extremely energy efficient, using minute amounts of fuel to supply astronomical amounts of energy—reducing land and resource use. However, it has largely eluded research scientists—largely due to the massive engineering challenges associated with fusion reactors. While recent breakthroughs have shown promising results, they importantly do not meet cost or efficiency requirements to make fusion feasible.

 

I think the opinion piece makes some strong points about the limitations of fusion technology and the unrealistic expectations we have in the short term for it. Climate change is a current and pressing issue. While funding alternative energy research into futuristic technologies like fusion energy is essential to our long term plans to address climate change, expecting that a technology we have not even proven is feasible will address all our energy needs in the short term is unrealistic and unreasonable. In the short term, we can’t look to fusion as our future and ought to reinvest in proven technologies like solar, wind and nuclear energy before it is too late.