About 12 years ago I came across a New Zealand produced film ‘Last Paradise’. It is hands down one of the best films I’ve watched, displaying the daredevil adventures and innovations of some of New Zealand’s original thrill seeking pioneers such as A.J. Hackett (who popularised the bungee jump).
I highly recommend watching the film which can be rented or purchased for download from the website. It manages to highlight a very important global issue, exploring the use of science to harness the powerful forces of nature to create clean energy via a device called a Tokamak, while also being a fun and entertaining watch for thrill seeking adventurers.
It was from this movie that I first heard of fusion energy and the Tokamak, and now just recently China has achieved a new world record, reaching a steady-state operation of high-confinement plasma for just over 17 minutes, at temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, using their super conducting Tokamak - what is being called an "artificial sun".
EDIT: I don't in any way support fusion energy, it was just an interesting sidebar in the film but if you're an adventurer/thrill seeker, then I think you would love this movie.
From the film:
“Surfing was largely disrespected and few adults had ever clambered around the Raglan rocks to investigate our antics. But that’s how Professor Liley was different. He seemed fascinated by how much of the wave energy we converted into velocity.
“Through the power of physics, he could explore the true reality of the Universe beyond human perception.
“Professor Liley knew all about energy. He was appointed by Ernest Rutherford’s colleague Mark Oliphant, to pioneer a massive clean energy source which they had discovered from sea water by a method called fusion.
"Fusion is the source of the power of the sun and the stars and as such is the source of most of the energy on this Earth.
"The hot fusion reaction on our sun uses a fuel called deuterium which is also found in sea water. And if you have a bathtub of sea water you have enough deuterium in there for your personal electricity consumption for 30 years.
"The best way that we know of at present to extract fusion energy is by using a device called a Tokamak. The first Tokamak in Western world was built in Canberra by Professor Bruce Liley.
"Bruce Liley has pioneered the maths, physics and electronics of fusion energy. But igniting fusion requires temperatures close to the sun. Liley could achieve a staggering 10,000,000 degrees inside his Tokamak using relatively little energy but his physics showed that to go all the way he would need a bigger machine.
"But something even bigger would stand in his way… politics.
"We went back on to a fossil fuel diet when we should have been developing all these new energy sources.”
To watch the trailer or rent/purchase go to https://lastparadisefilm.com/