These kinds of stories occupy an interestingly weird part of our approach to nuclear issues. The earliest example of the "kid does atomic things" trope I've seen dates from 1946, and was a mix of "kids these days" and "nuke info is everywhere."https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/22/boy-12-said-to-have-created-nuclear-reaction-in-playroom-lab?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet …
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I was, incidentally, able to track down the kid from the 1946 story (now not a kid, obviously, and an accomplished person in a non-scientific field of work). He told me that the story led to relentless teasing from his classmates for years. No clue if that would apply today.
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In general, the "event X can do this!" (where X is a kid, a college student, a trucker, whatever) stories tend to obscure the gap between these kinds of demonstrations and their more substantive outputs), and in the levels of "help" often made available to the individual X.
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Why don't you think fusion is the answer ? Is this in one of your blog posts ?
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I think fusion is a good long-term bet (and should be funded as such), but I think the odds of it being a useful short-term technology (much less aiding with climate change) are very slim, even if we hit break-even tomorrow (which we won't).
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Do you follow General Fusion's approach ? Seems far more practical than the big tokamaks.
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