(LEARN3) SimPower not so SimPle

SimCity 2000. It was the wave of the future. Microwave future, that is. Though I wouldn't understand how the word "microwave" applied till years later, the incorporation of a satellite microwave power plant in the 1990's computer game changed my life growing up.

Too strong of words for a utility essentially the equivalent of a 4x4 piece of virtual terrain? Perhaps. But the game's futuristic vision of cleaner, more reliable energy did teach me the principles behind pollution. The game didn't use words like "sustainable," nor was there talk about climate change, but it was made clear that you'd have to invest in something different than coal, oil, and natural gas if you wanted people to be happier and the environment (including cities) to be healthier.

Advantages and disadvantages were accurately presented of real world power sources, including coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydroelectric. What stood out to me, though, was the futuristic use of fusion and space-based solar power. While they were products of science fiction, I always wondered if one day they would become science fact. Fusion is fission's better half, so to say, with its waste's half-life drastically shorter than fission's (compare 50 years of high level danger to thousands of years with currently used nuclear technology). Its technology is also less translatable to use in nuclear weapons (say goodbye to nations using nuclear power as a possible cover-up for nuclear proliferation), and its choice of isotope (that of hydrogen or lithium) is so abundant there would be no supply shortage for 150 billions years, over 10 times the currently measured age of the universe. We will have to keep on dreaming though, at least for now, as such commercially available technology for power plants is seemingly at least a century away due to economic and technological constraints.

Space-based solar converts solar energy in space to microwave beams for transmission to earth. This solves the decreased efficiency of current earth-based solar power technology as exposure to the sun's rays would not be affected by weather, time of the day or year, or the air in the atmosphere. The effect the radiation of the microwaves would have on the ozone and life on earth, the reliability of microwave beams to solely hit intended receivers, and the economic cost of orbiting satellites are the remaining issues to be addressed before the launch of such technology, which could come as soon as 2030. Seemingly, what was once the future is becoming the now.