Will Nuclear Fusion Change Our World?
What if our world was powered by a cheap, safe, clean, virtually limitless, sustainable fuel source such as water? If energy is cheap and available to all nations, that could reduce global political tensions. And if it comes from a clean-burning fuel source, that reduces air pollution. Billionaires such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen have been big supporters or research into fusion as an energy source. "What we're really doing here is trying to build a star on Earth," said Laban Coblentz at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a massive fusion reactor being built by 35 countries in southern France. Fusion is what keeps stars, including our own sun, burning bright. Nuclear Fusion is also the principle behind how a hydrogen bomb works. As a source of energy, fusion works like this: You take two gases called deuterium and tritium and you heat them under pressure to at least 100 m...