I am aware of the properties of fission nuclear reactors. Something I would encourage you to consider is the scale that would be needed. Look at the proposition critically and serious challenges emerge.

I wouldn't describe my perspective on this approach to be hopeful. We need serious advances on multiple fronts to even make a dent in carbon emissions with capturing systems, and these advances need to happen quickly and enable rapid scaling.

Fission? I guess it's possible, but I think there are still problems. Fusion would work better at that scale if we could build reactors that actually work cleanly.

Running a carbon capture system is incredibly energy-intensive — it essentially requires building a new power plant to run the system, which would create another new source of air and carbon pollution. That undermines the whole goal of capturing carbon in the first place. While our country emits roughly 5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, removing 1 billion tons of that through direct air capture would require nearly the entire electricity output of the United States.

We need something like a fusion power breakthrough to make it work.

It’s also important to consider the scale of what would be needed. The Energy Department recently announced $12 million to fund ‘direct air capture’ projects and touted the possible removal of 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To put this in perspective, the largest corporate polluter in 2018 was responsible for releasing 119 million tons of CO2 equivalent — and that’s only one of them.