[ RadSafe ] Fusion, The Manhattan Project, and World Wars

[Fredrick L. Miller]

"In my "mind's eye", I am trying to picture what might happen if we
embarked on a
program  to develop fusion energy similar to what was done in Manhattan
Project
for fission. I don't know how he did it, but somehow Oppenheimer led a
group of
must have been technological prima donnas in what must have involved
sorting
through and rejecting many dumb ideas to successfully choose something
that
actually worked. This effort must have involved overcoming a lot of hurt
feelings.
I don't know whether it would again be possible without the incentive of
a world
war that we had to win or some similar motivation, but it's nice to know
that it
happened once---so perhaps it is possible that it can happen again."


In my opinion we're engaged in a struggle now which is much more
dangerous for humanity and more likely to lead to war than anything
we've ever seen before.  Whether through political manipulation,
depletion of resources, overpopulation, economic disparity, or other
mechanism, we've come to the brink of war over energy resources.  For
now, it's a cold war waged by the government agencies and corporations
of developed and emerging nations.  Soon the gloves are going to come
off if we don't find a way to change how we produce and use energy.
When that happens the shooting wars which ensue will make previous wars
look like schoolyard spats.  One place I think the scientific community
misses the mark is our inability to convey the gravity of the situation
to political and business leaders, and solutions we can contribute to
prevent this from happening.