What could provide even more energy than an atomic bomb?

It’s another atomic-based alternative energy technology, called “fusion”.

The atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II released energy through a process called fission, the result of atoms of heavy atomic weight being split. That same process is what has made possible the alternative energy produced by nuclear reactors.

Atomic fusion is just the opposite, combining into one particle separate atoms of light atomic weight. When joined, the total mass they have as a single particle is less than what they had when apart, and what’s left over is released as energy–450 times more energy than they had when soloing–which could someday be an alternative energy source of electricity.

Where would the atoms for alternative energy nuclear fusion come from? Unlike the rare uranium and plutonium ores currently fuelling our nuclear reactors, fusion is deuterium-and-tritium based.

Deuterium, happily for the economics of the proceedings, is abundant in ordinary sea water. And tritium can be created from lithium, one of the more common components of the earth’s crust.

So what are we waiting for?

Before the deuterium and tritium atoms can be persuaded to join forces to produce alternative energy, they must be heated to temperatures found only in the core of the sun.

Traditional technology can’t sustain temperatures like that long enough for fusion to occur. Any materials involved would melt and contaminate the process, and right now the energy required to achieve and sustain those temperatures is far greater than the alternative energy a single reaction would produce. We need to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction.

But there is hope. The Russians have developed a system in which a fusion reaction, instead of occurring in a traditional reactor, is confined by a magnetic field impervious to the enormous temperatures involved. So far these magnetic fields have been able to sustain fusion for only a few seconds, but if they succeed, the alternative energy produced could create steam to generate electricity.

And all from magnets, sea water, and dirt.