It won't be here anytime soon, it may not be here soon enough at all, but at least they're giving it a shot. Today France, along with five other EU states, sealed a pact to begin work on a nuclear fusion reactor.
This is not your typical, Homer Simpson reactor. Fusion energy is said to be safer, cleaner and cheaper than the reactors we've come to know and distrust.
The experimental reactor is to be built in the Provence region but we may have to wait up to three decades for it to evolve into a practical, demonstration reactor. A fusion reactor reproduces the sun's power source, produces no greenhouse gases and little nuclear waste and runs on hydrogen readily extracted from water, or so we're told.
Some environmentalists criticize the venture as a distraction from the global warming debate but the technology is certainly worth exploring, at least until someone comes up with a better alternative.
Its too bad that Canada rejected that project a few years back. It could have been ours.
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