[CharlesBKramer]

Transmute wrote: Oil is an excellent fuel if only there was a way that fusion power could make oil

Yep, which is why oil is so difficult to replace. But it’s also filthy, toxic, and pollutes when burned.

Fusion = cheap electricity = cheap hydrogen from the electrolysis of water.

And that hugely reduces the need to use fossil fuels. Cheap hydrogen combined with atmospheric nitrogen can economically make anhydrous ammonia, which is a transportation fuel, as well as a precursor to fertilizer. Google:

anhydrous ammonia transportation fuel

and see.

Before he died in 2010, peak-oil maven (and energy investment banker) Matthew Simmons claimed he had funding for a large windturbine farm to be situated far off the coast of Maine (where the Continential shelf creates the shallow waters that makes a far-offshore wind farm practical). The hope was electricity would be so cheap it would make off-shore production of ammonia possible. For reasons no one seems to know, the plan died with Simmons.

Ammonia has less energy density than gasoline, but it is far less toxic, and contains no carbon (NH3) — which means it burns without ANY carbon pollution (no CO, no CO2). It is also relatively easy to store (easier than natural gas) and the USA already (in connection with its use as a fertilizer precursor) has a national pipeline and storage system for it. Existing cars can burn ammonia with modest modifications, and there is research into a diesel style ammonia engine (very high compression, no spark plugs or the electronic equivalent).

If nothing else, for the short term (decades) an ammonia-based transportation system would free up natural gas to be used as an industrial feedstock. Ditto oil. Both are arguably too valuable to burn. One irony of a transition to ammonia is suddenly carbon might become suddenly valuable (for future synthesis of methane from atmospheric hydrogen) — so coal would return + hydrogen for Fischer–Tropsch synthesis.

The bigger problem may be metalurgy. Statistics on worldwide reserves (for example, of copper) hide a decline that has been consistent since antiquity in the *quality* of ore. The earliest discovered copper was probably pure — pure enough for someone pounding rocks to notice something really special. But by 1850 good copper ore was 6% copper. By 1900 1.5%, and today less than 1%.

To some extent, cheap energy overcomes that problem (processing is ore is cheaper, digging deeper is cheaper) but the problem may be a fundamental limit on the fantasy of perpetual industrial growth. A lot of what made the USA so rich 100 years ago was plentiful anthracite coal and iron ore of the Messabi range that was 60% pure and ready to dump into blast furnaces. Now most anthracite is gone, and good iron ore is only 35% pure and requires processing before being blasted. Cheap electricity may not solve all problems.

If focus fusion should succeed in its goals (very cheap electricity, aneutronic, decentralized distribution, low capital costs enabling a rapid transition) the social and political and economic implications are beyond imagining. Possibly one could list the primary initial effects:

— coal mining ceases (until needed for Fischer–Tropsch methane)

— fission power ceases (so uranium mining and the danger of weapons proliferation decrease)

— acid rain and mercury poisoning of the ocean (and thereby the foodchain) ends

— the global warming debate becomes obsolete

— economic dominance based on fossil fuel riches ends

— the USA Navy fufills its dream of going all electric (superconducting ship engines, railguns)

but each of those initiates a cascade of infinitely more consequences. The end of coal mining means an immediate decline in freight rail traffic. The decline of economic dominance based on fossil fuels means other countries become relatively more powerful.

I am optimistic the world that will emerge will be a better one, but it may not be a familiar one, and imagining it is a job more for novelists than anyone else.

– Charles

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Q: (NYTimes) With science unfolding at such a heady pace, do you think that maybe… science itself has taken the place of science fiction?

A: (BY RAY BRADBURY) Not for a minute. We’ve always been ahead of them… We went to Mars long before they headed there.

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