Fusion isn't even economically viable, and can't be allegedly made viable without multibillion dollar projects with high probability and history of boondoggle status?
Come on.
Steam engines clearly produced power at a huge economic benefit.
LFTR also has this characteristic, and also needs vessel engineering to become profitable and usable.
Fusion has dubious net power benefits, dubious profitability even with net-energy experimental status.
And all of that is wasted funding, that should go into battery, solar, wind, electrical transmission, and other storage means, which are beating coal (thankfully) and will hopefully beat natural gas soon.
At the rate renewables are dropping in price, fusion will NEVER CATCH UP. It's not even a matter of the old "twenty years" joke. It's not going to catch up. Ok, maybe in a hundred years when the main research curve on those has finally petered out.
You seem intent to couch your armchair predictions as ineluctable.
Sticking with the steam engine comparison it was 320 years ago that we had the first proper steam engine (arguably some variety existed ~2 millennia ago, but that'd just support my argument even more).
It took 70 years, though, before we had a decent one (Watt's). And that was before anyone had worked out how to bore accurate holes in cast iron -- so even that was version was a bit clunky.
In contrast it's less than a hundred that we've even just known about neutrons, and the complexity delta between boiling water and fusion reactors suggests that we (you) should not assume that if we haven't solved all the problems around them yet, then we never can or will.
Statements like this:
> Steam engines clearly produced power at a huge economic benefit.
invite questions as to why we hadn't been doing this for thousands of years.
Everything is clear in hindsight.
> And all of that is wasted funding, that should go into battery, solar, wind, electrical transmission, and other storage means, which are beating coal (thankfully) and will hopefully beat natural gas soon.
How society expends its resources isn't a consensus arrangement - sometimes very frustrating, other times it works out well.
Fusion research has a huge positive benefit if / when we get it to work. It's also probably going to be very important for the initial extra-solar expeditions. Doubtless there'll be other, currently unknown, benefits that come out of fusion-related research.
Multiple billions of dollars that you are cashing in _right now_ as inevitably hugely positive and beneficial.
As if the alternative investment of those limited funds wouldn't be MORE beneficial pushing the envelope of storage/solar/transmission/EV/battery research.
It's clear you're a fusion researcher, thus the only guaranteed benefits is your bottom line and continued ability to work in your desired field and specialty.
I am not a researcher, I'm just a generally frightened environmentalist, and my opinion is that this is a boondoggle that can wait for when lower scale pure research has produced a more clear path, and when bigger problems have been solved.
Luckily for you, I have zero input into budgeting and policy.
Come on.
Steam engines clearly produced power at a huge economic benefit.
LFTR also has this characteristic, and also needs vessel engineering to become profitable and usable.
Fusion has dubious net power benefits, dubious profitability even with net-energy experimental status.
And all of that is wasted funding, that should go into battery, solar, wind, electrical transmission, and other storage means, which are beating coal (thankfully) and will hopefully beat natural gas soon.
At the rate renewables are dropping in price, fusion will NEVER CATCH UP. It's not even a matter of the old "twenty years" joke. It's not going to catch up. Ok, maybe in a hundred years when the main research curve on those has finally petered out.
If we're still here.