Hello audience! I would like to grab your attention to tell you that there is actually a solution to global warming. And I know at least some people might be wondering how, thinking about what.
I know a few of you are like me who at some point fell in love with the clouds, or maybe the sunsets or the sunrises, or the moonlight or the twinkling of stars or bright skies.
In 2023, I began to notice the gray shade in the distance. It only gets worse. Sometimes it’s so bad I ask if it’s just dusty, but it’s not. It is polluted. I want to fix it. But how?
Just as this obsession began, my sixth grade science teacher, Mr. Lalazarian, the class tasked with making a report on some new scientific event. That’s when I read about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s great success at nuclear fusion.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says fusion can generate “almost four million times more energy than burning oil or coal.”
Scientists working in nuclear fusion fuse tritium and deuterium together to maximize the amount of energy created in a small area. Wow! It has almost no radioactivity and does not harm the air or our beautiful sky.
Okay, enough rambling and let me wrap it up for you. Nuclear fusion is a slowly but very surely developing method of making clean energy. Tritium, also a version of hydrogen, is very rare and very expensive but can be produced. A good thing to note is that deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen, is much cheaper and can be found in seawater.
Finally, let me just say this: In 1903, a leader in the New York Times said it would be 1 million to 10 million years before flying machines existed. Sixty-nine days later, the Wright brothers flew the first plane. Sixty-six years after the first plane was piloted, space travel occurred and humans landed on the moon.
It’s crazy how fast technology can take off, so with that I say an investment in nuclear fusion is an investment well spent in a better future.
Abbott Swartz is an eighth grade student in the Los Angeles Unified School District.