Fusion

This could be a genuine breakthrough. Or, it might be a dud.

This week, US scientists at the National Ignition Facility announced they have successfully used a laser beam to cause nuclear fusion that generates more energy than what was required for the event to happen. The net energy gain might seem miniscule. But if scientists manage to scale up this process, this could end civilization’s dependence on fossil fuels and on nuclear fission technology with its waste by-product that remains radioactive for thousands of years.

Stars draw their energy from nuclear fusion, enabling them to persist for billions of years. Science has known this for a long time. But for so long, scientists have had difficulty replicating the conditions that result in nuclear fusion.

Fusion happens in the Sun because of very high temperatures and intense pressure. The Sun’s temperatures reach around ten million degrees Celsius in pressure that is more than 100 billion times more than the Earth’s atmosphere.

It was far easier to cause nuclear fission. This involves splitting heavy atoms to produce energy. We made bombs and power plants from this knowledge.

It has been far more challenging to cause nuclear fusion, which involved pushing together atoms under high heat to produce a heavier one. We create energy from the heavier atoms.

Nuclear fusion does not produce greenhouse gasses nor radioactive waste. It is not dependent on the vagaries of the weather as solar or wind power sources are. It seems like a way out of the dangerous energy trajectory that threatens to make our planet uninhabitable.

But wait, truly clean energy from a fusion plant near you is not about to happen until many years – maybe many decades or many generations. Billions of dollars have been invested in facilities exploring how to make fusion happen. Enough energy has been generated in these facilities to heat a few kettles of water. Science has not found a way to make fusion happen on an industrial scale.

We are now, it seems, in a race between advancing our knowledge of nuclear fusion and the process of global warming that could make us all extinct. Energy from nuclear fusion is not imminent. Climate change is happening faster than we dare to imagine. The odds are against us.

However, if science delivers beyond expectation and we are able to scale up the production of energy from nuclear fusion, then paradise will be won. All humanity will enjoy all the energy it needs without killing the planet. The cost of power will drop dramatically. Cheap power will enable all economies to progress rapidly.

Many years from now, our descendants will visit museums displaying internal combustion engines. Those fortunate human beings will wonder why the present civilization was so stupid that we used these planet-killing technologies.

National pride

When we were all locked up because of the pandemic, Ricky Lee found the opportunity to watch K-dramas. After taking in quite a lot of them, he came to the realization that this form of Korean exports was so appealing because they brimmed with national pride.

K-pop, K-dramas and Korean food all hit the global market like a single cultural wave. The phenomenon is driven by the extraordinary pride South Koreans have in what their civilization achieved. They celebrate their lifestyle, their food and their music.

Filipinos have been avid consumers of Korean cultural exports such that one legislator proposed banning them to create some space for our own cultural productions to thrive. That was a lame proposal.

Filipinos have been trying to create our own cultural exports by mimicking Korean boy bands and telenovelas. But the element of pride in our own unique cultural achievement is not sufficiently there.

Ricky Lee is, of course, a cultural creator in his own right. His work was adequately rewarded when he was named National Artist for Literature for his stories, novels and screenplays. Last Thursday, the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry added to the accolades by awarding him its “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

With his recognition as National Artist, Ricky Lee freed scriptwriters from anonymity. For too long, we have celebrated movie stars and great directors to the neglect of scriptwriters. Lee recounts how he spent years trying to convince movie moguls to do his script for “Himala” – one of our most important cinema classics. He conceived the movie and worked the script. When the movie was finally done, the movie posters did not even acknowledge his existence.

This will never happen again because of the movie’s critical reception and Lee’s recognition as an artist.

Lee is not the first Filipino-Chinese to be awarded the nation’s highest honors. Ang Kuikok was named National Artist ahead of him. But he is the first artist to delve into the soul of the Filipino Everyman and elevate it to cultural treasures.

In college, his friends teased him for being a “Bikolanong Intsik” who took up English literature and wrote in Filipino. He personifies our culture of multiple roots. He made those many roots the basis for his powerful cultural synergy.

Lee confesses to having a poor sense of direction such that he enters whatever door was open and took whatever road seemed appealing at that moment. That is the story of his colorful life.

In the book he gave me, Ricky Lee scribbled memorably: “In appreciation of all the journeys we have all taken.”

After over four decades straying about, we finally reconvened.