Nuclear Fusion and the imagination of a six year old boy...

Now, I may be alone in thinking, or not, about what the future holds for any of us, if not all of us. But, when I was a child, aged around six, the very mention of the word “nuclear”, sent me into panic stations and I was frightened to the core. Now I’m older, perhaps wiser but with definitely more comprehension of what all this information actually entails and, although there is still a fear, the reasoning is more logistical inasmuch less paranoiac but with the knowledge of knowing what damage could be inflicted and yet with, probably, a different outlook on the possible survival rates and options given that concept.

I’m also, you could say, quite disappointed;

For those of a like minded disposition, nature, science fiction isn’t as much as science fact as we were led to believe when young, it would be, for us it could, should, have been a natural reality that would see the onset of into our twilight years. And make us all immaturely gleeful. What happened?

As a child, much like any other little boy of my ilk (or girl), I watched in awe at movies and TV of men travelling through space; at hover cars parked above streets; laser guns; a relatively trouble free society where even the rat population was afraid to procreate and expand.

It was a projected vision of a life where almost everyone was happy (without the aid of drugs). A life where no-one was poor, no- one ever again went hungry, no-one was sick, at least for long and everyone had a position in society and job too whit.

The atmosphere was clean and blue. There was no litter on streets or anywhere and all the rivers ran with ‘clean’ water. Everybody had somewhere to live and weather came moreorless on demand. There were no worries about energy and where it came from, everything was run by nuclear fusion, trouble free, clean energy. And cheap.

There’s that nuclear word again...

In the movies we became embroiled and encompassed in or your parents or even your grandparents had probably watched, we were taken to worlds of sheer bliss and fantasy, into a future the thought of which didn’t really have us thinking we were living in but could live in. That somehow, especially to ‘us’, it was all as if it was ‘just around the corner’ and that we, as the new generation of the workforce, would be working, perhaps, in one of these new fusion centres or at the very least, dreaming up new ways to advance mankind in fantastic progression that was of benefit to all, to bring the human race into the scenarios set by those movies we still remember with such fondness but without the wobbly sets, z-list acting and 5th rate special FX.

If, like me you expected this and more by the onset of the 21st century, that it would all be ‘common or garden’ and in everyday use, and all done without corrupt governments and similar emissaries, you too will feel, perhaps slightly apprehensive but in the main, disappointed that these achievements have, not only been reached but with seemingly no ‘real’ inroads to what still remains as ‘the imaginations of six year olds’ and more...

So why disappointed? With several reasons that could be mentioned and pertinently so. We’ve seen a man on the moon, allegedly, Yet we have the common cold and cancer is still rampantly killing mankind.

With so many options for fuel alternatives, we’re still dependent on oil and coal.

Personally I think that’s probably more about money and righteous power than forward thinking on an alternative energy source that we could enrich our lives with.

There aren’t too many bucks to be made from cheap power that’s affordable to EVERYONE!

Greed and lauded gentrification of a few implicate the poorer of the world’s
population to the bottom of the ‘to do’ file.

Criminals, albeit corporate and ministerial, are the ruling elite and as such, control the world as we know it via the gun, drugs and inflicted misery as well the greed of misuse of funds with controlling banks and corrupt governments. And what is done? Nothing!

Now it is decided by whosoever that the time is right to build what a lot of us have waited for since our far off childhood of imagined dreams and projections. At last, a nuclear fusion energy plant.

And yet, I still remain somewhat reservedly disappointed. Why? Because I may well have shaken this mortal coil and departed before I see fruition of this fantastic plan or, at the very least, too old to care or feel the benefits of; unless of course, some of the other objet’s of science fiction may have been heralded in from the sci-fi medium such as freedom from illness and aging and we all get to live for hundreds of years just like in Star Trek. Just who knows what the future may bring, even in the foreseeable future there may be unforeseen surprises and in that respect, perhaps my generation may still have something to look forward to.

Nuclear fusion, we’re told, is a clean and safe source of energy and will be a great beneficial revelation for the needs of every nation. Providing the ‘money’ men don’t hold all the aces and use it as another source of exploitation. But in respect of our own children and their children, their futures will benefit differently for the Vernesc and comic book future that impacted our young imaginations; that gave us such hopes. And dreams. It is a start one would suppose. At long last...

Locally for me, there is a power station in our town, fed by fossil fuels to generate electricity that adds to the National Grid.

Also locally, we have installations chocked with scientists working towards the goals our imaginations sought, some probably who viewed such futurescopes as I did. The possible annotations of this new project are, in the main, astounding to many people, people denied the visions a lot more of us were not only privy to but force fed on.

It has been announced, this week in my local newspaper that a new nuclear plant is to become a reality and while I feel somewhat pleased for the onset at this stage of advancement I still have reservations at the time scale offered for its ongoing construction, time I feel could have been started earlier or even ‘hurried’, time I had not previously envisaged, mind you, at six years old, everything seemed to arrive on the ‘next bus’!

I am now in my 52nd year. The forward thinking protagonists believe the plant would be fully operational, i.e. contributing to the National Grid, by 2050, building being completed by 2030 and, once a business case is compiled and completed (by next year – 2011) projectedly, technical thinking and preparation can begin in the interim years up to 2020 when the first stages of construction can begin in full, only 64 years after I had the initial privileged vision on my TV set of a fully working model when I was aged just six years old.

Am I right to be or feel disappointed while quietly being excited about what is, a big step in the progression of mankind and for the benefits of us all? You all?

Well that is my right.... (and yours too if you so wish).

Advancement that occasions benefit is good, sometimes we have to wait a wee while? If we look, gaze back into history and more especially, recent history, advancement has taken major strides, especially in technology.

Given that, at six years old and in those movies, we saw computers that were bigger than houses and let’s face it, couldn’t do that much. Today, you can hold a computer in the palm of your hand and can do so much more than anyone really could have thought possible 40 or 50 years hence.

We can telephone someone on the other side of the world. Wirelessly!

We have photographs beamed, from extreme outposts of the literally known universe, back to Earth to view on these hand held icons of technology giving us never-before- known concepts about the stars that make up the universe and teaching us more about how the Earth was initially formed and came to initialise life. Us.

And yet, children still die in thousands on a daily basis from simple ailments and the foregoing of the elixir of life, water, clean water. Rivers still burst their banks and create floods at the very hint of rain. A sometimes expected modicum of snowfall disables an entire road infrastructure, causing loss of life and/or liberty to many while children grow up without learning the basics of life or survival and work towards joining a queue once their education term is over. For dole!

Hospitals, created and built to heal and save lives are dirtied with disease that take a fatal swipe at the healthy sick. There is no protection against increasing prices while the ‘operators’ are getting very rich on extreme and obscene profits purloined because of the needs of their customers.

There are no safeguards to ensure all are enabled the necessities of life, food and water, sometimes it being priced out of many people’s range of affordability.

Everyone has a right to life, comfortably so.

Obviously this nuclear fusion plant cannot be ensconced to ‘mend’ the aforementioned logistics but when the projected outcome has been operational and indexed, the benefits will provide for all nations, so much so that the other ‘problems’ can be addressed more simply and hopefully, cheaper.

This project will create many jobs to begin within its first days of construction. As an ongoing scheme, jobs will be safe for a couple of decades. That can only be good.

But, I think we may have missed the opportunity to have implemented this at an earlier stage. Previous plans must have been commissioned and perhaps shelved. I don’t know, I’m just guessing but I’m sure the information isn’t something that’s just boiled. It’s been simmering a long while, hence those old Fifties and Sixties movies and their outlandish ideas. But, many good things have been born from outlandish ideas.

Maybe some inauguration could have been enacted when the ideas first came to those clever enough to envisage what could come of simple doodles on notebooks from disenchanted science students wallowing in boredom at the back in lecture halls throughout the country’s universities. In simple terms, implemented from the very imaginations of children who were once six years old with avid interests in old B-movies on TV and the resulting imaginative renderings that came as they learned and understood.

If such things we hope for the future were only written and displayed, even if only for entertainment purposes, why was it or is not, have been possible for someone to have nurtured a vocation, a dream to good for all? They did.

Unfortunately Mankind’s mental progression has been held up, but it seems it is now getting there. But was it viable before now? Was it deliberately delayed? And if so, why? The only answer I can think of is – sterling – the dollar – the yen – and the bloody euro!

Maybe I have an unhealthy cynical viewpoint. Perhaps so but given the ammunition, is it so surprising? War and controlled misery seems a much more paramount option to a world choking on its own vomit...

However, we should openly welcome this new stride into progression of the planet’s resources and ensure that ONLY good can come of it. It must be stringently manned and not abused by those still Neanderthal enough to want to destroy their fellow man.

In an age that has seen the onset of death and destruction by, first, the atom bomb in 1945 and the consequent build up of weapons through mistrust of each other, culminating in a major stand off – the Cold War – and now a new threat that wants to sanitise the world by the very concept we know and will eventually see, benefit the whole of mankind.

We must stride forward and nuclear fusion is indeed the first step, a very major step but necessary for our ongoing survival on what is a sickening planet. Yep, it’s that word ‘nuclear’ again, only I’m no longer six years old. I know the dangers and while reserving a little private fear, I can see the benefits as well as the dangers in equal balance. We all will.

We must do this together. Everything else will come in it all too good time...

© tcmoon 2010