We have looked at fission, we looked at the pros and cons of nuclear energy obtain from fission. But as we remember if we cast our minds back to the picture that we looked in some sessions ago, they showed the binding energy as a function of number of neutrons and we had that we can slide down that curve in two different ways. Either we can break up big nuclei or we can stick together fuse small nuclei the idea of fusing together small nuclei and release energy because we are going to a configuration which is energetically more stable and therefore they capture the difference in energy is the idea behind fusion. Now in order to motivate the discussion, let me show you this graph here do you remember that we had before the stack of consumption due to cars, due to jet propulsion and we had how much could be provided by wind, by solar etc. This picture here shows all the energy consumption per person and what fusion could in principle deliver so, this is a motivating picture if we could crack the fusion problem solved completely and totally and more than we need. So why hasn't it been solved? The said Joke is is that fusion is 40 years in the making all the time and when I was a child I used to hear that is it's going to take about 40 years and I'm no longer a child obviously and I was in middle age and it was a young man and now and I'm still here that fusion is about 40 years in the making. Make no mistake the technological problems, not the theoretical problems with technological problems with fusions are massive we are trying to create a mini sun on earth. Know why a mini sun? Because it's exactly the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms I say atom as you're saying, nuclei that produces the energy that fuels the sun and that comes on the earth we receive as tiny, tiny is more fraction of that energy and it would be more of enough to capture for all of our needs. So I will not try to minimize or trivialize the difficulty of the task however, the research effort that is currently devoted to vision research is absolutely tiny there is a bit more effort in Europe what is going on in the states is absolutely minute. I heard a statistic on BBC by Professor Brian Cax That struck me as unbelievable And it said Professor Brian Cax said that America spends more money per year in a poodle grooming, Sorry, pet grooming. The nuclear fusion research, pet grooming is cutting the hair of your dog etc, and perhaps getting fancy food for your cat and so on. I couldn't find the source, I couldn't contact Professor Cax in order to substantiate this quote and so it is some calculations of my own and the calculations that I've come up with tell me the following more money is spent in the US on beer, on a single day of 4th July. Then for nuclear fusion research in the US more money spent per year on artificial, not natural artificial Christmas trees than for fusion research. Well, if this is the state of funding of an enterprise such as fusion research, well obviously it is 40 years in the making actually is probably 80 years in the making probably is an infinite number of years in the making. But if something has been taught to us by the sad experience of the COVID crisis is that when we have a pressing problem and we put our back to it, we can find solutions in amazingly short times. The COVID vaccine seems, as I speak, seems to have been developed in under well under 12 months normally, the cycle from beginning to release to the public can be 56 or 10 years, not 10 months so, what is required is the desire of the willingness the investment in order to crack a problem. In the case of nuclear fusion, the problem is more complex that in the case of technologies such as carbon sequestration, negative emission technologies, in that case it is sufficient. It's not little but it is sufficient to give enough subsidies the beginning to make the technology a bit more efficient and therefore it requires less subsidies and it becomes more efficient and in a relatively short period of time the subsidy cycle is cut is can be switched off. That is what has exactly what has happened in the case of wind energy with wind turbines that originally were strongly subsidized, then the subsidies were reduced and reduced and we're at a stage now where subsidies are barely needed if at all, the situation is different in the case of nuclear fusion because we don't have a situation when we can do a lot with subsidies. So what is required is a concerted research effort that it is unreasonable to expect to be coming from the private sector because from the private sector, the project is too long range and too uncertain to commit the funds necessary to do something of necessary scale. So, given the prize that is potentially within reach, I think that the cases should be made for massive government expenditure in fusion research. At the moment, we are spending a lot of money in space research and we are touting the possibility of exploration to mars etc, I'm a scientist I love all these exploration and scientific discovery etc. But I'm really thinking in terms of priority, thinking of how important the issue of climate change is and what a radical difference fusion could make if the research resources are spent currently in the best possible way. And as you might recall when I was talking about fission, I made the point that what keeps me most awake at night and sometimes literally keeps me awake at night is the possibility of nuclear proliferation. The added benefit of fusion is that yes, it does produce radioactive material but for a variety of reason which is too detailed technically detail to go into now it is much less usable the material for military purposes and also from the point of view or storage of waste material the storage problem is easier to handle than in the case of fission. So there is a hope coming from fusion, we can only know whether this hope can be turned into reality if substantial research and research is deployed into this. And because of the nature of the problem, these resources have to come from government intervention, which obviously means other taxes or raising debt, nothing comes for free. But it seems to me that this is one of the avenues that should be explored with great seriousness.
