I’m not even sure to begin in dissecting this opinion piece, but let’s start from the top down.

“all using nuclear fission, which involves splitting heavy atoms of elements such as uranium and plutonium. The process produces tons of highly radioactive waste, the ingredients to create nuclear weapons, potential…

It sounds like you’re conflating two different issues, and a reliance on fusion would almost entirely end the need to mine uranium. You’re right in that fusion doesn’t clean up existing uranium contamination, because they’re completely different issues. Fusion also doesn’t make me dinner, that doesn’t mean its not…

Can I just say that someone that works in the Energy industry(mostly renewable in the past) and has been deeply involved in both the waste question and fusion(including very tangentially ITER): this article is awful, preachy, badly researched and full of emotive opinions with a poor evidence base.

I wholeheartedly agree that there are already (imo) too many people on this planet - However, populations growth rates in many developed / western societies have already been decreasing after the baby boom. Whenever living standards increase and average life expectancy increases within a given population, the overall…

I do not see how it makes any sense to even mention nuclear fission in an article about anything else. Nuclear fusion opponents know nothing other than it hasn’t been make cheap enough yet (unless they actually worked in the field and decided the other choices are cheaper). Fusion is the ultimate, but not promised,…

We shouldn’t make perfect the enemy of better.

Glad to see so many comments pushing back against this fearmongering, but the stuff about lithium is maddening. Intermittent renewables will require far, far more lithium for storage than either fission or fusion reactors will. And Australia mines far more than Chile and Argentina combined.

This part is 100% true…

Stop this anti-nuclear fearmongering bullshit right now.

Fusion simply doesn’t come without a cost.

Lithium? Really? What about the milliards of basically useless gadgets out there? What about wireless keyboards and mice that should be wired?

100% this. This article is absurd and full of nuclear fear mongering.

Problem of fusion isn’t an expectation that it’s gonna save us, the problem is that it’s currently nowhere near feasible. Because if it was, it’d be a no brainer.

Nuclear Fusion Will Not Save Us

I was under the impression that’s what the current mad dash for the moon is all about. Add in private space flight, and you have the makings of countries mining tritium from the moon, and hiring SpaceX to transport it back to earth for use in reactors. 

This... So much this... Environmentalists want limitless energy with no downsides. Sorry not possible. Do wind turbines kill some birds? Sure. but they kill and debilitate with lung conditions a lot less people than coal power does. These people stand in the way of progress no matter how much better it is than what we…

Yeh, I think you are spot on. Once we figure out the storage issue, which we seem to be doing, there will be no need for this.

Well not with that attitude it won’t.

Considering the fact that we still get 1/3 from coal and 1/3 from natural gas and their collective downsides, it’s still probably a net improvement.

I don’t think anyone is thinking that fusion can “save us” any more than some might believe that putting human beings on Mars can “save us”. Let’s look at it realistically.

If we’re talking about how awful lithium mining is electric vehicles are a much better point for scorn than nuclear fusion, which is still a pipe dream at this point. whatever our future power structure is it will likely involve nuclear energy we just need to do a better job of using it in a way that doesn’t harm…