What’s it cost to entice a $1 billion nuclear plant to your city? Only $800 million in tax forgiveness for the next generation . . .

Photo above - local Albuquerque residents break open a few cold ones to celebrate $800 million in tax breaks awarded to a proposed nuclear power plant.

People in Albuquerque are cheering. Pacific Fusion has selected New Mexico for its $1 billion nuclear fusion plant. New Mexicans aren’t going to see any actual electricity from this new plant, however. It will CONSUME power instead, because this is just an experiment, not a working reactor. See ABQjournal.com link below.

I had never heard of “Pacific Fusion” before this morning, so I googled them. Wikipedia has never heard of them either. The closest I came to authentic financial data was the link at bottom, to the Financial Post. A year ago Pacific Fusion's first mention was: “unknown startup nabs $900 million from venture capitalists”. They have zero plants until today's announcement. The Albuquerque location will be their first. And New Mexico taxpayers have become venture capital investors to the tune of $800 million.

Although I am clearly ridiculing the use of tax dollars to propel venture capitalists’ schemes, please note that I am NOT dissing fusion power itself. Even though we've had dozens of claims of fusion breakthroughs over the last decade, and so far no device that produces more kilowatts than it consumes. The Albuquerque plant will do exactly the same.

Remember the tickertape parades and popping champagne corks when some college professor announced he had invented “cold fusion”? That sounds significantly safer than the device proposed for Albuquerque, which will operate at 150 million degrees Celsius – hotter than the center of the sun. Has anybody checked out if that will add to global warming? And if a fusion reactor melts like a broken Fukushima or Chernobyl containment vessel, will it "safely" sink into the center of the earth, so it doesn’t harm anyone? What happens when a 150-million-degree fireball reaches the center of our planet, which is only 10,000 degrees? That core will be more than 1,000 times hotter than the lava at there. I hope this isn't one of the experiments Pacific Fusion has planned for its new plant.

I am not inherently against fusion experiments, whether cold, or room temperature, or hotter than the sun. I am not against wind turbine farms, solar farms, tidal power, thermal generation from magma fissures, microwave beams pointed at us from orbiting satellites. I just don’t want my tax dollars given to billionaire venture capitalists to make money off these things.

Let the venture capitalists and/or shareholders bear ALL the risk. Unless someone holds a vote and America's Amazon drivers, public school teachers, and soybean farmers sign up to have their tax dollars involved. Don't leave these decisions in the hands of the local mayor and city council. They're simply lawyers and former school board members who can't even keep the water supply running safely.

But I personally won’t be on the hook for a dime this time. Residents of Albuquerque, this one’s totally on you. But consider breaking ground on a new fire department located near this research hotspot. Just in case 150 million degrees has unintended consequences no one anticipated. We’ve never actually been to the core of the sun you know, so whatever's happening there is strictly a matter of conjecture. And ask the people of Fukushima and Chernobyl what happened their mayors invited "normal" nuclear reactors to their towns.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Pacific Fusion chooses Albuquerque for $1 billion nuclear fusion site | Business | abqjournal.com

Nuclear Startup Pacific Fusion Nabs $900 Million in Funding | Financial Post

Pacific Fusion Corporation Company Profile | Fremont, California | Competitors, Financials & Contacts - Dun & Bradstreet