What investment opportunities will arise if experiments with nuclear fusion prove successful?

Answer 1

Nuclear fusion would be one of the greatest and scariest thing to every happen to man kind. Imagine if fusion really worked. Extremely cheap, clean, safe, abundant energy! It would change mankind.

Think of this scenario.

It would be discovered in a single country - let's say Japan. Unless the discovery was made at a public lab, the technology would be unlikely be shared with the rest of the world due to the billions upon billions of dollar sunk into the project.

Oil, natural gas, coal, uranium and refined product would collapse. There would be a major financial shock around the world, not in the good as a huge portion of the world's commodities went through immediate deflation. Countries in the Middle East, Central Asia (including Russia), Norway, Algeria, Tunsia, Brunei, Nigeria, Venezuela, Indonesia and other "energy" source countries would be thrown into a major financial and fiscal crisis as their revenue source collapsed. Civil wars would break out as governments could not pay its employees or pay for basic services. Areas in the Middle East would go back to the stone age. Currencies would depreciate, causing a worldwide currency and interest rate crisis the world has never seen.

The assymetrical dystribution of technology would lead to wholesale collapse of certain energy-intensive industries as absolute competitive advantages due to essentially free energy would crush competitors outside the sphere who had the technology. Cars would all come the mother-country owning fusion technology. Steel and other industrial metals. Ceramics, plastics and other synthetic goods. Batteries. Food. Water. Transport. Military appilcations. Woe to the company that had to compete against another company with essentially free energy.

There would be a new world order of politics - those aligned with the country owning the technology and those on the outside.

Stock markets, bond market and commodity markets would be pounded as the markets factored in the huge amount of new risk into the market.

There would be some positive things as desalization could lead to the reclamation of otherwise arid land - but this would be after a massive shock to human civilization.

Careful what you wish for. It could be a dream come true that might be a nightmare.

Answer 2

Considering the government has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into nuclear fusion in the last 30 years and so far has turned up empty handed, I am not holding my breath on any great break throughs during my lifetime.