An editorial titled “Fusion reactor: The countdown has begun” by Hari Pukkat on the Economic Times web site — an Indian publication — reviews the recent news about nuclear fusion, focusing on the recent Lockheed Martin announcement, but also mentions that cold fusion research is ongoing in a small community of researchers.
The main message is that fusion research is ongoing and there is likely to be a major breakthrough in the field that will change the energy landscape, but predicting just what that breakthrough will be, or when it will happen is not possible at this point.
Pukkat writes:
“Although it is difficult to plan our energy future based on these claims, a commercial fusion reactor – whether hot or cold – no longer looks like a pipedream. There would be one within the lifetimes of many readers, and probably within the lifetimes of most people in the world. The real question is this: will they be good enough to change the world? . . .
“Fusion technology could make a significant impact one day, but not likely through the combined effect of many incremental advances. We would see one big breakthrough at some point that would overturn the energy landscape and bring forth a new era. It would like the transistor spawning the computer age. We don’t know when this advance will take place. It could be a few years or a few decades away, and most likely before the middle of this century.”
It’s all rather vague, for sure; it seems to be a prediction based on the laws of probability with few specifics. But it’s another sign of more interest in the fusion field and a little more respect being shown to cold fusion.
