Environment & Energy

...stuff what they know about nuclear engineering, about which they clearly know nothing at all.

The helium to cool the superconducting magnets for all these miracle fusion reactors is coming from where?

Got a video to share? How about a cut and paste page?

How will the tritium breeding work? The separation of the lithium isotopes to get the minor one in pure form? Found a way to make that lithium blanket we hear so much about adhere to the walls of the reactor, so that not a single 14 MeV neutron leaks out without generating a tritium atom from ⁶Li?

Maybe some idiot whining about tritium in Fukushima water can get tweezers to pick out the tritium out of seawater for these magnificent fusion machines. Is that an idea?

Do any of our fusion miracle people have any idea where the world supply of tritium, now less than 50 kg, has been isolated? Do they know from what source?

The exergy extraction using 14 MeV neutrons will work how? What will be the step down to capture the energy balance in the form of high energy gamma rays for the 3 MeV balance? What will be the effect of spallation on material integrity on the fusion reactor walls when they've run for a year, assuming they can find the tritium to do it?

I'm sure there's a video or a cut and paste straightening me out on these points, no?

This will be a magic "panacea?"

Speaking only for myself, I've been attending lectures on fusion at PPPL for more than 15 years, beginning when my youngest son was seven years old. He grew up listening to those lectures. This year, I made a point, during Q&A of one session, of letting them know that even if they never build a fusion power plant - and there's no evidence they ever will answer the questions asked above - their lab has been a success for basic science.

They do love to talk fusion though, although this year, the assistant director told us that the name of the lab is not the Princeton Fusion Physics Lab but is the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. It sounds as if she was hedging the bet.

At PPPL they always like to tell us all about Lyman Spitzer, who founded the lab, invented the Stellarator, born in 1914 and died in 1997. From 1951, when Spitzer first started pushing for Project Matterhorn and got it founded in a chicken coup to right up to 2026, in a hundred million dollar complex with his name on a building, the fusion miracle has always been just around the corner.

How about we bet the planetary atmosphere on fusion, just like we've already bet it on tearing the shit out of wilderness for so called "renewable energy" and the mines to support it? Anything but fission, right? How's that working out? Are we on the precipice of success, or was the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over 432 ppm as reported this morning?

May 26: 432.53 ppm
May 25: Unavailable
May 24: Unavailable
May 23: 432.58 ppm
May 22: 432.58 ppm
Last Updated: May 27, 2026

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2 Accessed 5/27/2026 10:40 PM EST.

How is that so called "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who call dreamily for neutrons an order of magnitude higher in energy than fission neutrons are so fucking interested in stating what nuclear fission can't do but completely disinterested in what fossil fuels are doing?

Do any of these, "fission isn't good enough" types care what fossil fuels are doing while muttering insipidly about what they say fission can't do? I mean really? Here's a clue about what fossil fuels are doing: They're killing the fucking planet and people and other organisms living on it, on a vast scale, constantly, without interruption.

It is too late, as I've stated many times, for nuclear fission to do what it might have done, because everybody's been trained like automatons to wander around dreamily hoping for something better while powering the spreading of their dangerous and ignorant rhetoric with computers running on power systems all of which are worse, far worse, than fission plants.

Only fission needs to meet standards that nothing else is required to meet. Right? Who cares how many people die today from air pollution or extreme heat? Fission isn't perfect so it's OK for people to die from fossil fuel waste? Do I understand the antinuke cults correctly?

Nuclear fission doesn't need to be a "panacea" to be vastly superior to all the other shit that scientific illiterates hype here, none of which have arrested the disaster now under way. The "panacea" such as it exists right this fucking minute is fossil fuels. I have never met an antinuke or an "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke who gives a flying fuck about the existing "panacea," fossil fuels. I never have; I'm not doing so now; and I never will.

They're apparently fine with fossil fuels, these people, about which they couldn't give a fuck, and they demonstrate as much every time they open their mouths to carry on, with no knowledge at all of engineering, about what they say, wallowing in their abysmal ignorance, nuclear fission can't do.

If it can't do everything, whatever it can do it does better than anything else.

Got it?

No?

I couldn't care less.

Have a nice day tomorrow.