[Icybee]

If this works, and the global demand for fossil fuels significantly reduces or disappears, imagine the impact it will have on the countries whose economies are largely dependant on exporting oil, gas or coal. A large part of the Middle East, or even countries lie Russia or Venezuela could be in for a very bad few decades.

We could be in for turbulent times, if it works.

[jahnu]

Surely cheap energy for all would help any country raise it's standard of living. I think you could as easy argue that we'd see less turbulence since nearly all resource constraints would be relaxed. Salt-water can be desalinated cheaply and pumped anywhere. Factories powered. Homes heated or cooled. Travel would be inexpensive. CO2 could be extracted from the air and buried.

[patrickk]

> Travel would be inexpensive.

This would be particularly exciting. Ships, trains and physically large forms of transport (maybe even aircraft/spacecraft?!?) could have fusion reactors built in.

Electric cars charged by cheap power from local, neighbourhood fusion reactors. The power grid is decentralised with reliable baseload power sources, that are clean, reliable (no intermittent problems with weather with renewables) and safe. Power sources can be located where they are needed, whether it's in a basement, on a roof of an urban building or on Mars.

[db48x]

Don't get too starry-eyed; this is deuterium-tritium or deuterium-deuterium fusion they're talking about. It produces neutron radiation so you still need shielding, and it really complicates the materials engineering. All the properties of the material you're using to do some job depend on what kind of atoms are in it, and all those neutrons are busy transmuting those same atoms. The first working fusion reactor will probably have crazy maintenance requirements. (It's already a bit of a problem with fission plants, but with the simpler fusion reactions as much as 80% of the energy is produced in the form of neutrons.)

The holy grail that you're thinking of is aneutronic fusion, usually deuterium-helium3 or deuterium-lithium6. He3 is super rare though, so a D-He3 reactor using it might need to get the He3 from a bigger fusion reactor using D-D fusion, which produces it (and that pesky neutron).

Even better still might be proton-boron fusion; it needs temperatures an order of magnitude higher than D-D fusion (and magnetic confinement two or three orders of magnitude stronger), but produces far fewer neutrons (there are fewer undesirable side reactions). Alas, this route will produce four orders of magnitude less energy than the much simpler D-D reaction.

Given the scale of the engineering problems, we could even end up harnessing fusion power by building dyson spheres; a star might be the only feasible, stable way to build a fusion reactor. Hopefully our universe was set on an easier difficulty setting than that when it was instantiated.

[mcv]

> The holy grail that you're thinking of is aneutronic fusion, usually deuterium-helium3 or deuterium-lithium6. He3 is super rare though

Finally a good reason to go to the moon!

[patrickk]

Thanks for the information. I was thinking of the implications of the dream scenario, not that I think it's actually plausible. From what you've said it really sounds like a compact, low maintenance fusion reactor is still way, way off, perhaps a century or more (if it's feasible at all.) Maybe we need a working quantum computer to run simulations to build a fusion reactor, another dream project that is also constantly a decade away, or a super intelligent AI to tackle the problem ;)

[dagw]

Countries care about relative standing compared to its neighbors as much as (if not more than) absolute standings. How is a country that uses the promise of cheap gas and oil as a carrot to keep its neighbors in line going to react when its carrot is taken away and all it has left is a stick?

Furthermore many oil rich countries have shown much more interest in using their wealth to increase the wealth and power of the elite and to oppress and control the population at large. How will they react when they face a very real risk of losing power? How will the oppressed people react when they start seeing the wealth (and the power that comes with it) slipping out of the hands of the elite?

[Icybee]

Enough to counter the disappearance of the 85% of export income Saudi Arabia gets from oil?

Enough to counter the fact that Russia gets 52% of its federal revenue from oil and gas?

I find it hard to believe that making desalination a little cheaper, or transport a little less expensive will even come close to counter balancing those sort of percentages.

And even if it did, the relative importance of nations will change. Nations that were important because they had fossil fuels will become less important, and nations that were held back by lack of resources could become more powerful.

Those sorts of changes in power balances would cause a lot of turbulence.

[adventured]

Saudi Arabia has 27 million people; Norway has 5 million; Canada has 30 million.

The massive leap forward that goes with any new breakthrough in energy supply or cost, is without question worth the potentially negative effects those countries will suffer. Saudi Arabia can find other ways to build economy, as so many other countries that lack oil have to do.

Russia is the only one on the list that worries me, because of what a truly destabilized Russia might cause.

Venezuela might even benefit from their oil system going to zero. It'll force their leadership and people to move to a functional political system, and away from the oil welfare bribery that Chavez used which has crippled the nation.

[BillyMaize]

>Salt-water can be desalinated cheaply and pumped anywhere.

Really? I thought salt water desalination is a rather difficult and expensive thing to do. Can you cite support for this statement?

[mcv]

With access to cheap energy it becomes a lot easier. You could just boil it and collect the condensation.

[pixl97]

That's still pretty damn expensive. Ever leave a pot on the stove boiling and let it run out, the amount of precipitate is surprising. Do that on millions of gallons of water and you end up with a lot of material that needs cleaned often and isn't easy to get off.

[jpindar]

The precipitate from evaporating (or boiling) ocean water is valuable. Take a look at an aerial photo of the southern end of the SF bay sometime.

[mtbcoder]

Given that fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource and the urgent need to reduce/eliminate dependence on fossil fuels due to climate change, will this not happen regardless though? I would hope these countries have the sensibilities to see the writing on the wall.

[Zigurd]

"Turbulent times" but at much lower stakes. If you take oil off the table as an incitement to resource wars, there is much less chance of US, Russian, or Chinese adventurism. That's a tradeoff I'd take.

Having to get serious about building open modern secular self-sustaining economies would not be a bad influence on that region either.

[Systemic33]

There will still be a significant demand for oil for other product, such as plastic, rubber, etc.

[XorNot]

This wouldn't do a thing to oil wealth. Fusion displaces coal, not oil.