February 2010, New Human Era, more than ten years after the Earth’s destruction...
After two months of research, calculation, discussion, and verification, the team of scientists finally finalized the preliminary budget for the entire nuclear fusion project.
This budget covered the scope of the massive endeavor, including the "nuclear explosion reactor" and the "spaceship."
This meeting was critical, the first major gathering after the New Year holidays.
Rumor had it that a viable solution to bypass the "Great Filter" had been found. Many Federation executives and engineers made a special trip from the surface. Naturally, they had heard the whispers beforehand and were somewhat prepared.
But this preparation was quickly shattered by a devastating reality.
During the meeting, Jason stared out the window with a grim expression.
He wasn’t the only one; many others were looking around nervously. Some rested their hands behind their heads, while others whispered amongst themselves, trying to mask their inner turmoil.
Things in this world are always this difficult, Jason thought to himself. Achieving limitless energy... is never easy. It truly isn’t.
The universe is vast and boundless, far beyond human imagination. Similarly, its dangers are unimaginable: supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts, black hole devourment, planetary collisions—all sorts of astronomical disasters where even the slightest ripple could wipe out life.
Yet, strangely enough, the universe is teeming with life.
Life is everywhere, scattered like dust. Even intelligent civilizations are scattered all over the place.
Amidst all this, the Great Filter stands like an impassable wall, leaving civilizations incredibly lonely, like isolated islands in a vast ocean.
On these isolated islands, each civilization enjoys its own beautiful dream. They remain isolated on their respective planets, unaware of each other’s existence, unaware of each other’s struggles... and so they live and die without ever interacting.
A true interstellar civilization is like a precious gem in the desert, incredibly rare.
Fortunately, humanity had encountered an extremely rare event: they had witnessed a true interstellar civilization!
Yes, it was a blessing to have seen it. Otherwise, it would feel as though the path forward was completely blocked.
But what would ordinary civilizations, those who might never encounter an interstellar civilization, think when they hit the "Great Filter"? Would they be as resolute and driven as the Federation?
Most likely, no.
Jason snapped out of his reverie, shaking off his wandering thoughts. A number popped up on the screen in front of him, a number that made his head ache.
"34.86 billion tons?!" He grabbed his hair, pulling at it in frustration.
Turning his head, he met Evan’s bewildered eyes. The two exchanged a wry smile.
The wry smile was entirely justified, all because of that single number.
34.86 billion tons. Just thinking about it gave Jason a sense of overwhelming emptiness; the sheer scale made him lose his grasp on the concept of numbers.
More than a thousand engineers and senior scientists sat in the conference room alongside a group of Federation executives, all wearing expressions of sheer disbelief.
"As you can see, yes, we plan to build four massive reactors, each about 15 kilometers in diameter. They will be more than capable of easily containing a megaton-yield nuclear detonation..."
Professor Hao Yu was delivering a passionate presentation, throwing out a barrage of incredible terms.
"The total steel consumption is estimated at 34.86 billion tons, and various superalloys will require 1.33 billion tons, including aluminum alloys and superconducting materials... I apologize, but this is merely a preliminary estimate. It remains uncertain whether we will exceed these limits."
The Federation executives were completely stunned. They could barely comprehend what Professor Hao Yu was suggesting.
What did he mean by... four super-large nuclear fusion reactors, each 15 kilometers in diameter?
One was crazy enough, but they wanted to build four?
Four!
34.86 billion tons?!
Not 100 million tons.
Not billion.
And that wasn’t even factoring in all the other miscellaneous materials!
Did they think this was just billion tons of dirt? This was metal, which required massive amounts of energy to refine! You couldn’t just pile up that much steel haphazardly; it had to be carefully engineered and constructed!
The old Earth’s annual steel production had been only 1.6 billion tons. It would have taken 22 years of continuous global production just to refine over 30 billion tons of iron!
How many people were left from Earth? How many made up the Federation?
The group stared blankly at the printed reports in their hands. The data was laid out clearly and realistically, backed by solid formulas and explicit figures. Some even pinched their thighs to make sure they weren’t dreaming.
"Gentlemen, haven’t you considered this? This is the Great Filter! If it were truly that easy to overcome, wouldn’t interstellar civilizations be far more common?"
"The Great Filter leaves us with only two paths: stubbornly pursue ’magnetic confinement,’ or attempt this. Do you have any better alternatives? If so, tell me."
Seeing the shocked expressions on everyone’s faces, Professor Hao Yu roared with impatience.
"Four reactors are not excessive. We need them so they can be rotated for maintenance and used alternately. Do you think these reactors won’t need repairs? We are talking about live nuclear detonations happening inside them!"
"Of course, the economic scale of these mega-reactors alone is enough to crush lower-tier civilizations. The cost is at least hundreds or thousands of times the old global GDP. Ordinary civilizations simply lack the industrial might to undertake such projects!"
"But we are the Federation! If we achieve this, we will secure near-limitless energy. Limitless!"
Professor Hao Yu shouted passionately, his blood boiling at the prospect of taking on such a monumental endeavor, regardless of whether he would live to see its completion.
His words instantly struck a chord with the room. Many nodded in support, while a significant number remained silent, deep in thought.
He was right. Was the Great Filter ever going to be simple?
This path seemed straightforward in theory, but in practice, it was a nightmare. The colossal amount of engineering involved was the ultimate challenge.
Jason shook his head and smiled bitterly. Even though he had braced himself, the reality was far more exaggerated than he had anticipated.
Generating electricity through controlled nuclear explosions required nuclear bombs as fuel. It felt as though the universe was playing a cruel, intentional joke on civilization.
Tritium could undergo a nuclear fusion reaction at tens of millions of degrees Celsius, but it did not exist naturally.
Helium-3 required 100 million degrees Celsius and was exceedingly rare.
Deuterium required 500 million degrees Celsius but existed in abundance.
Protium, which was ordinary hydrogen, required a reaction temperature of over 1 billion degrees Celsius, and the universe was full of it!
It was absolutely maddening—the universe was definitely doing this on purpose!
The only nuclear weapons that could be mass-produced were the Tetrahydrogen bomb or the deuterium bomb. The spherical structure required for these weapons meant their yield couldn’t be scaled down too much.
So... the only viable solution was to build the reactor large and robust enough to contain the blast, essentially brute-forcing the difficulty of nuclear fusion with an astronomical amount of engineering.
A nuclear bomb with a yield of one million tons released 4.184×10^15 joules of energy, which was equivalent to 1.152 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, roughly one-tenth of the daily electricity consumption of the old North American continent.
Even if they could only harvest 10% of the energy from the detonation for power generation, that would still yield over 100 million kilowatt-hours per blast.
What exactly did one hundred million mean?
The raw number wasn’t intuitive enough.
According to Professor Hao Yu’s plan, a single nuclear reactor would be equipped with generators capable of an output around 1 billion kilowatts, or 1 trillion watts.
After a single explosion, it could sustain power generation for over 400 seconds or about seven minutes, yielding more than 100 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
This was true nuclear fusion. A power generation capacity of 1 billion kilowatts seemed genuinely unfathomable.
It was completely absurd; the Federation’s current electricity consumption was less than 100 million kilowatts.