Part of the subsidy farming business model is never to succeed. If you let that happen the subsidies go away. So it’s a cast iron certainty that there will never be a viable fusion power system in Tennessee or anywhere else.
I’m nearly 80. I won’t be around in 2040 to say “I told you so”. So I’ll say it now. >I.Told.You.So< Put that in your safety deposit box and take it out on Jan 1, 2040.
Now if they promised us a molten salt thorium reactor I’d be all over it. Cheap, safe, almost 100% waste free, creates its’ own fuel once you get it running..... It’s already been done once, and it’s easily scale-able. Thorium is plentiful; you can even extract it from coal.
But the subsidy farmers don’t like it. No long-term potential.
Yeah, I think the molten salt reactors are a good bet too—but I don’t think that they will deliver the profound price reduction that the fusion reactors promise.
The huge thing that the fusion reactors promise to do is convert electrons directly into electricity—unlike the fission reactors which convert the energetic electrons into heat.
But much of the driver in the USA for fusion reactors—is now coming from private money.
But the smell of success is in the air. So governments all over the world are investing big money into fusion.
If the fusion company in Washington state abides by their contract with microsoft—they will have a working fusion reactor delivering electricity to microsoft in 2028.
There’s a good chance you’ll still be around by then.