[from occupied ga]

Fusion is always about 20 years away from actually producing commercial power. It’s not anywhere close to practicality. I read that you have to get about eight times the energy out that you put in the plasma to break even to account for all of the energy used by the magnets, the cooling machinery, the transformer losses, etc. and then there’s the amortization of the capital costs. I’m beginning to think that fusion energy is just a form of welfare for engineers and physicists.

[piytar]

Fusion is always about 20 years away from actually producing commercial power. It’s not anywhere close to practicality. I read that you have to get about eight times the energy out that you put in the plasma to break even to account for all of the energy used by the magnets, the cooling machinery, the transformer losses, etc. and then there’s the amortization of the capital costs. I’m beginning to think that fusion energy is just a form of welfare for engineers and physicists.

I cannot disagree...

[pluvmantelo]

I’m beginning to think that fusion energy is just a form of welfare for engineers and physicists.

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Check out ITER. It’s a research/demo fusion facility being built in France (10 years and counting), the budget of which was initially projected to be 7 billion euros but is now expected to exceed 25 billion euros. The thing isn’t going to generate, assuming it works, a single watt of juice. Just heat, which be vented. It involves scientists etc from dozens of nations, including the US.