Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[Tulse]

Matt M wrote: Sometimes we forget that 1/2 of the people on the planet heat and cook with
wood or dung. Cheap fusion would mean real hope for them.

Unfortunately, I’d guess that folks using those sources of energy are so poor, and/or in areas with such poor infrastructure, and/or are overseen by such corrupt governments, that cheap fusion would not make much of a difference in the short or medium term. These are folks who could not afford a gas generator even if the fuel itself was free (much less the electrical devices it would run), so I can’t imagine that cheap fusion would make more economic sense for them.

I do think that cheap fusion has [em]enormous[/em] potential to drive economic development in the long term and lift huge swathes of people out of poverty, but largely by making economies richer in general, and not in direct help to the profoundly poor with their energy needs.