And one rantlet more. Or maybe two.
Hello, Hollywood, this is for you: Fusion energy is not renewable energy. Allow me to restate that: Fusion power is not a renewable form of power. Once the tritium or deuterium is spent, it’s spent. You’ll have to get some more. There’ll be a limited (albeit vast) amount of deuterium in the ocean, and some atmospheric tritium, though it’s probably easier to make your own. To summarize: Vast fuel supply != renewable energy source. Got that? Fusion power is not renewable power!
One could say, of course, that nearly all the power we use comes indirectly from stellar fusion: The Sun’s radiation drives the rain and the wind, and feeds the plants we burn for heat, eat to live or leave to rot for sixty million years before burning as oil or gas. Uranium is forged in supernovas. But that’s not relevant. See above paragraph for point. Mindwandering will now halt.
Why is that not relevant?
There’s over 24,000,000,000kg of deuterium in the oceans. There’s likely more yet in the crust, and hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. We aren’t going to run out, but if you’re seriously worried that we could and the academic distinction of renewability is that important, then you have to acknowledge that the sun’s fuel is not “renewable” either. And if solar energy isn’t renewable, nothing is.
I know being contrarian is fun and all, but jeez.
I’ll happily acknowledge that the sun’ll be dark sometime. If you’d like less of an angry rant and more of a calm, relaxed explanation, I’ll explain by saying that I consider fusion power as renewable as fission power, which is commonly not regarded as renewable. True, the waste problem will probably be less for fusion, but it won’t be gone. I don’t expect us to run out of deuterium in the lifetime of our planet, but then, I don’t think we’re out of fissile materials yet either.