Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,31 May 2016,17 mins

Elements: Hydrogen - Fusion

Business Daily

Available for over a year

Could we finally be about to crack this source of potentially unlimited clean energy - thanks in part to a plethora of private sector tech start-ups? Laurence Knight travels to one such company, Tokamak Energy in the UK, to hear from plasma physicist Melanie Windridge. Meanwhile the BBC's David Willis reports on the string of secretive new fusion initiatives along the Pacific Coast, and the Silicon Valley money backing them. Plus, could fusion energy open the way to the economic abundance and space travel portrayed in Star Trek? Laurence speaks to Trekonomics author Manu Saadia. (Photo: Plasma inside a Tokamak fusion reactor. Credit: Tokamak Energy)

Programme Website
More episodes