Survivors of the atomic bombing have campaigned for a world free of nuclear weapons. But 80 years on, that dream is fading. Three of Japan’s neighbors — Russia, China and North Korea — are nuclear powers, and Tokyo depends on the American nuclear umbrella to protect it. With tensions in the Pacific heightening and firsthand memories of nuclear devastation waning, more Japanese are questioning the national commitment to peace at all costs.
– Hannah beech reporting for the New York Times from Hiroshima
Sadly, it seems unlikely we will ever have a planet without nuclear weapons.
The world also stopped building nuclear reactors after some major accidents turned public support against it. Now we need them for fossil-free energy generation, and for all those power-hungry AI server farms.
By the way, I thought— how is that first fusion reactor coming along?
Google AI Overview says:
While the dream of practical fusion energy has been “30 years away” for decades, recent advancements and growing investment suggest a more optimistic timeline. While widespread commercial fusion power generation is unlikely before 2050 or 2060, some start-ups are aiming for electricity generation by the 2030s. The “ITER” research reactor* is scheduled to achieve first plasma around 2033-2034, and a demonstration reactor (DEMO) is planned for operation around 2050.
*A large-scale international nuclear fusion research project in France, aiming to build the world’s largest tokamak (a type of fusion reactor). The temperatures inside the ITER Tokamak must reach 150 million °C, or ten times the temperature at the core of the Sun. The hot plasma must then be sustained at these extreme temperatures in a controlled way.
