The next great innovation in the mass production of "safe" energy is almost bound to be one of two approaches, in my view:

(a) Fusion reactors. I haven't been keeping up with this, but last time I looked the Japanese seemed to be doing quite well in that area. Is Princeton still playing around with that balky tokomak reactor of theirs?

(b) Beamed energy from space (solar collectors). This is still in pipedream land, but seems to be feasible, given enough do re mi to fund the development. I know the ESA is looking at this but, again, I haven't taken a lot of notice lately.

Nuclear fission and windfarms seem to be pretty inefficient. Fission reactors are, as we all know, messy and uncertain beasts. Yet they seem to be the two areas which are currently available for relatively low-impact generation, using the term in its loosest possible sense.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...