469. Fusion

Magnus was invited by Bobby to witness the creation of history, the first complete test run of the Fusion reactor. It was a small reactor the size of a truck, it can theoretically power a small city of a hundred thousand people. For a city as big as London, New York and Tokyo, a few bigger full-size reactors would be needed.

Magnus arrived without much attention and took a seat in a visitors cabin. Bobby soon joined him and sat beside him. "You look fresh, it seems the happiness of your daughter being born soon is going to make you explode."

Magnus chuckled, "What can I say, this is something I always wanted. And you know my condition, this is nothing short of a miracle,"

"Congratulations, your majesty," Just then Adrian arrived.

Basically, all big names were invited to see. The Prime Minister, Adrian from MEDA, Edgar from Emrys Construction, Ted from Tonks & Tonks, Tom as Secretary of Defence. All from Order of the Merlin. Ragnar, Severus were there too. Grace wanted to come but she and Emma remained at Camelot. Adam was here though, helping with the experiment.

"Thank you, everyone. Because of all your combined effort, the nation is better than ever before and the world is less shitty." Magnus welcomed them.

Ted chuckled, "A snake can have as many heads as one can imagine but without the one head that has all the brains, the snake won't last long. You are the smart snake."

"No, not today. Today the smart snake is Bobby. Let's hope his plans work out and the reactor is a success. If it is then he will be changing the entire world." Magnus didn't want to take the limelight from Bobby.

"It's because of you that we were able to bring Helium 3 from space. I'd say it's a win for the Order of Merlin, without our combined strength we won't be able to do anything." Bobby said.

Everyone silently nodded. This was a reality. MEDA provides amazing security, not just to the labs but also to the key scientists. Emrys Construction built all the facilities needed for the project. Magnus provided money. Tonks & Tonks fought court cases after cases that were thrown on FutureTek to stop the tests, the cases came from various environment nazis. Fools lacked the brain to realise that creating this reactor would singlehandedly solve Earth's energy needs for centuries to come and all of it would be green energy.

"Initialisation is complete and the reaction will be observed in 30 minutes." A voice resounded on the speakers and the digital clock started the reverse countdown.

Magnus took out his staff at that instant. He was going to stay prepared for any kind of complications, no man should die here as that would put the project years back. If there was any problem, he could always reparo the whole reactor and allow them to test again.

But, it seemed that was not needed. The test they were going to conduct was not a stress test. This meant their basic purpose was to see if the reactor can reach the energy produced where it can sustain itself without needing energy from outside.

This was one of the main reasons why making it was so hard. 2 entire Thorium reactors were working full time to start up this single Fusion reactor.

"Am I late?" Harrison Ford arrived from the United States. There was also the King of Bhutan and Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister of Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Myanmar, Chief of African Union and the President of Argentina. All these were members of the Order of Merlin, meaning they were completely aligned with the goals of Magnus and had signed the contract paper.

"Just in time. It's about to start," Magnus invited him to sit beside him. In the room, he was the most powerful man, heck, he was the most powerful in the world, in both magical and political strength.

"You look tired," Magnus noted.

President Harrison sighed, "Soviets. Fools refuse to mend the relationship. They want all sanctions dropped for the negotiation to even start, how am I supposed to do that before they start showing the world their goodwill?"

"Just ignore that, I have something going on in secret, their fall is near. They will most likely be collapsing into various smaller states." At that Magnus looked back at all the other seats occupied by other heads of state or kings, "Heard that? The Soviet Union will be falling apart, this means a lot of their things will be up for sale as they fight poverty. Buy all the weapons and equipment you want, but make sure you help all the smaller nations that collapse out of the union and turn them into capitalist society, I will be behind all of it. Remember, our goal is the fall of communism."

All of them took mental notes, some wanted to buy ships, some tanks and some industrial machinery. Soviets had plenty of decent quality, second-hand meant saving money.

"Aye, anybody wants some oil, I'm open to all? This Magnus, he's going to turn the world electric with this reactor, how will I swim in gold then?" King Faisal all of a sudden spoke in a joking but secretly serious manner. He was too old at this point to care about others, the Order of Merlin was like a family and joking was no big deal.

In an instant, a few heads from nations with poor natural resources took his personal card. After all, it will still take time for Magnus to create a world grid of electricity with the nuclear reactors, until then oil was the gold that ran economies.

Amidst their small talk and laughs, Adam took to the mic inside the experiment hall where everyone else looked from a glass window cabin.

Adam addressed the people, "Do you know the best thing about being the British King's father? It's that I don't feel any pressure or anxiety for being in presence of 50% of the world's GDP sitting in that box. Welcome to the first real test of the Helium-3 Nuclear Reactor.

"Now, why is this a big deal and why is it better? Fusion occurs when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom, like when two hydrogen atoms fuse to form one helium atom. This is the same process that powers the sun and creates huge amounts of energy.

"Many of you might wonder, why are we wasting money here? We already have a reactor, well, that's because those we have can't drive humanity to the future. Let me tell you some comparison between the current Nuclear Fission reactors we have and in this Fusion one here." Adam moved to turn on the projector.

"Why is Fission reactor so dangerous? Simple, radioactive. Fission is done by splitting heavy. The missing mass converts to energy. This process begins when a heavy element, like a uranium atom, for instance, absorbs a neutron. Having an extra neutron, it becomes an isotope of uranium, and even heavier. Now unstable, the atom then falls apart into two smaller atoms, releasing heat energy in the process. It is this heat that turns water into steam, which turns a turbine, creating electricity.

"During radioactive decay, alpha and beta particles and high-energy gamma-ray photons are spontaneously emitted. These particles and gamma rays are what make up the radiation. In simple terms, just imagine your body's atoms destroying themselves. That's radiation, we saw it in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"The big question is, what makes Fusion so good? Here on the screen, you see all of them." Adam turned serious now as this was the end of the presentation to these people who will decide if it's worth waiting for this tech or not. Magnus may control these people's goals, but the roads they took were theirs to choose from. He only makes people heads of states who are reasonable and smart, hence, as long as Fusion was proven to be good, they will try to spread its positive sides to their nations.

"Number one reason is abundant energy. Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases nearly four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas and four times as much as nuclear fission reactions (at equal mass). Meaning, just 19 tonnes of Helium-3 could power the United States for an entire year." As soon as Adam said this, Harrison Ford moved in his seat. This sounded too good to be true, but here he was.

"The next reason is sustainability. Fusion fuels are widely available and nearly inexhaustible. Deuterium can be distilled from all forms of water, while tritium will be produced during the fusion reaction as fusion neutrons interact with lithium. Meanwhile, sea-based reserves of lithium will fulfil needs for millions of years. But we don't need to destroy our seas, we got the moon, it's even better as its fusion with deuterium is more efficient than deuterium-tritium.

"The third reason is no CO₂. Fusion doesn't emit harmful toxins like carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Its major by-product is helium: an inert, non-toxic gas. We can even harvest helium and build helium-based engines.

"The fourth and one of the biggest reasons is no long-lived radioactive waste: Nuclear fusion reactors produce no high activity, long-lived nuclear waste. First of all, the radiation in a Nuclear Reactor only stays inside its chamber, in the future when you decommission a reactor, the land will be radioactive for about 50 to 100 years, this is much less than the current thousands of years that take waste from fission reactors. The radioactivity of the products. U-235 has a half-life of 703.8 million years, so do the math.

"Another big reason is that fusion doesn't employ fissile materials like uranium and plutonium. Means no nukes, but that's already been achieved with Thorium reactors. The sixth reason is that there can be no nuclear meltdown because the production of neutrons ceases within milliseconds. This means even if some mad man dropped a bomb on a fusion reactor facility, no radiation will spread to the surroundings. We don't have much data about how far the radiation can spread, but Japan gave us a sample in the 40s.

"The last reason is cost. Of course, at the start, the cost of a reactor will be high. But, let's say in 5 years, we will be able to simplify the process of building it and be able to produce it around the world at a cost less than the current fission reactors. The simple reason is that to operate a fission reactor you need too many things, not just staff but people and places to move the radioactive waste to. Then you need security to make sure that waste remains locked for eternity. With this reactor, we just need to build it and be done with it.

"Now, any questions?"

[A/N: Wanna know why I explained all this? Chernobyl is about to happen. XD]

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CHOKE ME WITH STONES PLES!

[A/N: I found out this fic is on many pirated sites, can't imagine the confusion and disgust of readers whenever they reach the end of chapters.]

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