Several hours later, an almost identical equal-footing conversation played out again at the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, Germany.
Minister Thaddeus Belge performed far better than Fudge, but his expression was equally grim.
The moment he returned to the Ministry of Magic, he made the same decision as Fudge: investigate exactly where the Muggle government's confidence came from.
The answers both sides obtained were largely the same: the energy project jointly launched worldwide by the Muggle governments of European nations and the Eastern Power—the Bifrost Project.
The project planned to build and operate a large-scale Deuterium-Tritium Fusion reactor capable of commercialization and net energy gain (Q > 1), New Century Prometheus II, providing virtually limitless, zero-carbon, safe, and economical baseload energy, fundamentally resolving humanity's energy crisis, climate change, and geopolitical energy conflicts.
Prometheus II would abandon the Magnetic Confinement Fusion technological route used by its predecessor and, in a groundbreaking move, adopt several applications of "Black Technology" materials, one of which was graphene, recently discovered by William Snaith.
Deuterium-Tritium Fusion, reactors, virtually limitless energy, zero carbon emissions, magnetic confinement... the two Ministers of Magic were utterly bewildered and had no idea how valuable this energy project was.
The only thing they could barely understand was the project's name: the Bifrost Project.
Bifröst was the formal name of the rainbow bridge in Norse Mythology. It meant "the trembling road to heaven" and was the only bridge connecting Asgard, the realm of the gods, with Midgard, the human world. It was also called Asbru, meaning "Bridge of the Aesir."
The Muggles had named their energy project after a rainbow bridge. Did it symbolize connecting nations? A path toward a bright future?
It was not only the Ministries of Magic in Britain and Germany; magical governments across the world could not understand what this