Solar power? Yes please.

By Chris Davey

I just passed a birthday. I’m not really embarrassed about my age, but let’s just say it’s Sheldon Cooper’s [Big Bang Theory] favourite number. Well, it so happens that I share that birthday with my older granddaughter (six-decades-or-so apart). What are the chances of that?! Actually, quite high – only 365/6 days to choose from and about 8bn people on the planet, so the probability of two people having the same birthday is quite high. In fact, if you have 23 people in a room, the chances of two of them having the same birthday is 50%. The maths is a bit complicated, but for anyone who wants to delve, there is an explanation in Scientific American.

Mostly in honour of the younger birthday person, a family group of us went along to a ceramics studio to decorate pottery – no throwing, thank goodness, just artwork. Well, not really my strength but I was willing to have a go. I thought of making my bowl Cornwall-themed, but then I’d have to paint a variety of “clues” in a design, e.g. towans, an engine house, a chough, and maybe a pasty, and good grief, a scone properly formatted. Given my artistic skills, quite a big ask… so I gave up on that idea, decided to keep it simple, and – surprise surprise – decided on the theme renewable energy.

I had in mind one of those badges I used to wear in the 70s, the smiling sun with the caption “Nuclear power – no thanks”. These were available in many languages, and in fact I discovered that the original was designed by Danish activist Anne Lund in 1975, and so was obviously in Danish.

But thinking “keep it simple”, I omitted any facial features and went for this design:

I learnt at university that in UK, and elsewhere, people were working on harnessing nuclear fusion reactions to derive “unlimited pollution-free energy”. Of course since the 1950s we had been getting quite a lot of power from nuclear fission, but fusion would be a step-change; not only would hugely more energy be available, there would be no dangerous nuclear waste. (When uranium 235 breaks up it produces a lot of highly reactive fission fragments, which our nuclear physics lecturer enjoyed calling “fission chips”). Anyway, we’ve made some progress with fusion in the last 50 years – now we’re getting as much energy back from the reaction as we put in to get it going. It seems that “unlimited” energy from nuclear fusion is still quite far away.

But in another respect, available fusion power is not that far away — 93 million miles — yes, the sun is a massive fusion reactor, in which hydrogen atoms are continually fused together, releasing huge amounts of energy. It’s “conveniently” sited at a safe but accessible distance from our tiny fragile planet. I point this out when I see posts about how fusion power will solve our energy problems. Yes, it already is to an extent, and there is much more for the taking if we choose to use it. After all, we have the most southerly point on mainland Britain in our area, and although we already generate a lot of solar electricity, there is plenty of scope for more. In this respect, at least, the future’s bright.