Do you worry about climate change?

When electricity was in the early stages, the same factors applied. It is now universal.

Lots of ideas have been put forward. Going from something that works in a lab to something that works on a global scale is not easy. And anything that big might have risks or unintended consequences and/or huge costs. Getting international agreement and co-operation would also be an issue. There is also no obvious incentive for a particular country to launch into it because none of the technologies would have a useful local effect. There would have to be some strong international push-pull factor to get projects underway - combined with international agreement that the method is safe.

What happened to carbon capture and storage?
I think it's been put on the back burner by this government.

Sorry Elegran - hero worship? moi?

I hope no-one patents the technology and holds the rest of the world to ransom.

So many top scientists quietly chasing their tails, and doing their nuts, in the Oxfordshire countryside.

There will be another one after ITER called Demo, and then the one after that is supposed to actually produce energy. Each time, they get bigger.

Oh it would be a disaster if the Americans won the race!

They haven't made it work yet though.

It is on the horizon though, and will happen some day. The more effort that is put into making it happen, the sooner it will be a reality. Nuclear fission has such a bad image that there is resistance to nuclear fusion, too. A pity the names are so similar.

None of the other solutions (or even partial solutions) to global warming look likely to happen in our lifetime either.

That would be amazing if that small nuclear thingie went into production before the European project. I know someone who spent a large part of his working life working on JET (the predecessor of ITER) I can't believe that will happen. We won't see electricity produced by fusion in everyday life in our lifetimes. (Unless you are a spring chicken of course)

Jessm IT WAS A FUSION MOMENT

It should not lead to unbridled pessimism either.

And if the choosing of a new leader of the Labour party can generate such unbridled hero-worship, then the successful testing of a clean source of nuclear power can surely lead to some cautiously unbridled optimism.

The German success should not lead to unbridled optimism. The successful experiment cost a fortune and the fission event lasted a 1/10 of a second.
Just one of the many problems is when you generate a temperature of 100,000,000 degrees C you have a problem with it not melting your equipment... The UK prototype produces 250,000,000 degrees...
"Come into action" sounds like it generated electricity and was running regularly. It is a single successful experiment.
The MIT example is just an idea as yet.
It remains to be seen whether the difficulty of managing this technology will ever be viable. Interesting though to contemplate that the raw material (if hydrogen) would be cheap>
If it was helium - we are apparently using up the globe's supply of helium - squandering it on balloons.
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-ballooning-problem-the-great-helium-shortage-8439108.html
I'm afraid I am not an optimist in respect of human behaviour in this sphere. Humans can be fantastically altruistic in some ways - but also incredibly self-interested and downright greedy at the same time.

It is of course much easier for "journalists" to dwell on the bad consequences of continuing to warm the earth than it is for them to find stories of hard-won advances in the technologies that will provide power that doesn't .

If they wrote more items, and more items readable to non-scientists, on clean nuclear power and the need to develop it, and what progress has been made in doing just that, then people might stop saying "We can't do anything about it so let's close our eyes - and any nuclear power is a no-no, so don't even suggest it", and start saying "Why are we not devoting more resources to solving this at source?".

Reading some climate news elsewhere just now, I came across a new nomenclature: "climate non-alarmist". This is wonderful in the up-to-now excessively polarised discussions about climate change. It allows for nuance. There is always nuance in human affairs.

My declaration: I am a climate non-alarmist. I 'believe' in climate change but I think human beings, if they put their collective minds to it, can deal with it. And, from my point of view, most importantly, they can deal with it without depriving people in the developing world of power to improve their lives and living conditions.

Climate non-alarmists are hopeful and that hopefulness is not based on wishful thinking but concrete (!) stuff like that Wendelstein nuclear fusion project.

And here is another pie cooking away - MIT’s groundbreaking mini fusion reactor could power the world within 10 years

Jessm This pie may be about to come out of the oven and be ready to eat. A generator - Wendelstein 7x - powered by fusion (not fission) came into action three days ago in Germany. thatbags posted a link to news about it, but only two people posted replies (or even looked at it? did everyone think they'd just be blinded by science?)

DH commented the other day that there should be limits set on the size of acquisitions. Once a company has got to a certain size it should be barred from swallowing up other companies. A good idea I think but unlikely to happen.
Iam64 I fear that the only course left is direct action as I think the government have overridden all legal routes.
Thatbags nice fission if you can get it, but still pie in the scientific/engineering sky. When I was a child everyone thought the future would be full of space travel (and moon bases) by now and that cancer would be cured. 50 years on, there is very limited space travel and many types of cancer still resistant to science.

Of course renewable sources of energy will remain inadequate while the government finances fracking, oil and nuclear while removing subsidies from wind and solar.
It's not a level playing field.
I've just been reading about Shell wanting to buy out BG. It was worried that Shell shareholders would not agree, so has promised to axe another 2800 jobs on top of the 7500 it had previously announced. So that's okay, then, unless you work for BG or Shell. That's over ten per cent of the workforce losing their jobs, just so that one company can make money out of another company.
The shareholders that were going to rebel were Standard Life, just in case anyone with a pension with Standard Life feels like rebelling.

I remember several year ago reading that the climate here would become 'warm and wet'. That's certainly been the case in recent winters. It's currently about 12 degrees here in the north west and doesn't seem to have stopped raining for several weeks. I'm longing for some bright, frosty days rather than the endless grey, wet and muggy weather we're enduring. I keep reminding myself I'm fortunate not live live 80 miles north of here because then I'd be flooded (again)

We're also evidently about to be Fracked. That is some of our local open countryside and other areas within a 15 mile radius. The anti Fracking groups have been active for some time but given comments from government ministers about Fracking in the north west and east being fine I don't suppose we'll succeed.

Some climate scientists, including James Hansen, have declared that renewable sources of energy are and will reamin inadequate for a long time and that carbon-free nuclear power is the only realistic option for the immediate future IF reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the most important task in hand. Other scientists, and engineers (who tend to know a thing or two about how things work) have been saying this for years.

People will say what about the risks? There are risks (to people and to environments) involved with all energy provision. I don't think nuclear risks are higher than others.

I'm pretty sure the local decision to deny licence to carry out fracking in Lancashire was overturned by the government.

Each company granted a licence will need to handle claims for subsidence in the same way British Coal used to do all the time. This is such bad news and somebody will be making money hand over fist.

rosequartz

The Guardian on 26 September 2014 reported:

Ministers reject 40,000 objections to allow fracking below homes without owners' permission

"Fracking will take place below Britons' homes without their permission, after ministers rejected 40,000 objections to controversial changes to trespass laws."

(Oil and gas companies can now obtain underground access without needing to seek landowners' permission, despite a consultation in which 99% of those consulted opposed the legal changes.)

It goes on to say:

"New laws will now be passed giving automatic access for gas and oil development below 300m and a notification and compensation scheme will be run by the industry on a voluntary basis."

Friends of the Earth say on their website that "The whole of 8 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and almost all of a ninth, are to be offered up to oil and gas companies for fracking or other extraction in the latest licensing round announced by the government."

Recent news reports have said that areas like the South Downs in Sussex may be subject to fracking.

In my ignorance about fracking, what bothers me is low risk or not, why would we do something that could cause an earthquake? And what scientific evidence is there that our water supplies will not be affected? Rivers run underground as well as above ground and I am not at all confident that the fracking process can avoid contamination.

I can see the legal definition of land ownership being tested as part of new fracking applications.

No, roseq, that's the whole point. The same as the National parks, they can give permission to have the drills just outside the Trust land or the Park, and they can frack under it, as said previously. No access needed; the drill goes down to a certain level and can then turn to horizontal as far as they want under the land.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35107203

This is how it happens.