On a similar vein, I wonder what are the strategical consequences of such an advance. Assuming it works as described in the article, do you allow the technology to be exported ?
Because a whole fleet of fusion air carriers, battleships, submarines and bombers versus a conventional army has plenty of implications in term of autonomy, reach, etc.
But on the other hand, there is a such demand for energy everywhere that it would really hard to morally ban all the civilians applications.
Energy use of the US (2011): 25,484 TWh
Power needed: 2,900 GW = 25,484 TWh / 365 / 24 h * 1000
Number of 100 MW CFRs: 29,000
Civilian use will happen. The benefits are just much to great. There will be regulation and oversight for them. But you won't need one in every truck. It's overkill. As you can see from the above calculation 29 thousand CFRs could cover all the US energy needs. So there will be hundreds of thousands worldwide. It will be hard to keep all of them under control
But this would basically solve all of humanities energy problems and decrease CO2 production, and destruction of the environment from mining immensely.
Having large amounts of energy available enables new weapon systems to become feasible: high powered lasers, coil guns and rail guns. They can be added to any air, land, or sea vehicle that's above the size of a small truck.
Ships are pretty large anyway and aren't as restricted as land or air vehicles when carrying big machinery. Aircraft carriers won't change so much. You can build them a little smaller and their defensive weapons might improve. Nuclear submarines otoh could be built as small as modern diesel powered subs like the Dolphin class.
You could build a drone with an extremely long loitering time. If it uses a laser or rail gun, it will also have lots of ammunition. Instead of carrying a couple of hellfire rockets and having to refuel after several hours it could stay in an area for months.
