Each Monday Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, shares the top 3 to 5 energy revolution stories that have been revealed to the world in the past week.
In Energy Revolutions – Breaking Nuclear Fusion Records we look at the trends that we should be aware of today, December 12th, 2016. We see South Korea breaking nuclear fusion records, Canada turning poop into biofuel, and Tesla extending their network globally.

Another nuclear fusion record just got broken in South Korea

Scientists working to make nuclear fusion a viable reality have smashed another record, after the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor in South Korea maintained ‘high performance’ plasma in a stable state for 70 seconds this week– the longest ever recorded for this type of reaction.
Containing this ultra-hot type of matter is key to unlocking nuclear fusion, so it’s a big step forward in our attempts to make this clean, safe, and virtually limitless source of energy something we can rely on.
Read more at Science Alert

Canada’s Building a Plant That Will Make Fuel Out of Poop

Each time you flush a toilet, it’s the beginning of a long journey. Your waste makes its way through a maze of pipes and sewers, eventually reaching its first destination: a sewage treatment plant.
There, liquids are separated from solids, and each goes through a different multi-step process to neutralize toxins. Once they’re pure enough, liquids are discharged into nearby surface water (a river, lake, or canal), while solids go to a landfill or are further treated to be used as fertilizer.
What if at the end of this long journey, instead of a landfill there was energy? What if you could fuel your car by going to the bathroom?
As far-fetched as this idea sounds, it’s becoming a reality.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have successfully taken raw sewage and converted it to what they call biocrude oil, which can be refined in the same way as crude oil to make fuels like gasoline and diesel.
Read more at Singularity Hub

Tesla unveils its 2017 Supercharger network expansion plans

Tesla updated the Supercharger network map on its website to show its expansion plans for next year. With only a few weeks left in 2016, the company had fallen behind on its 2016 expansion plans for its network of DC fast-charging stations and the current Supercharger maps, which should have looked like the “2016 maps”, were missing several stations.
Tesla Supercharger “2016 maps” are replaced with “2017 maps” showing some new Supercharger expansions in Hawaii, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea and New Zealand.
Read more at Electrek

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.