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The story, for the last 40 years, has always been more "We'll have fusion in 20 years if you fund us" and as far as I can tell might have been true since the fu
by Symmetry 7y ago
The story, for the last 40 years, has always been more "We'll have fusion in 20 years if you fund us" and as far as I can tell might have been true since the funding asked for didn't arrive until ITER was finally funded and it hasn't used up its 20 years yet. The big difference is that advances in superconducting magnets that spun off from MRI research have reduced what "fully funded" can mean, meaning smaller players are getting involved.
- nick_kline 7y agoHumans aren't really capable of making 20 year plans to invent new technologies and implement them on a schedule. We don't know enough about how it works, we don't know what of many choices to make. What you can do is keep working to improve it and hope you'll get something useful. But it's silly, obviously not something you can do, to make such a large research project with a 20 year goal and so many unknowns and say we will have it with high likelihood. Research has to work toward broad goals and investigate new areas. In 1900 could you have made a 20 year plan to invent cell phones and all the technology needed for what we have today? No one would suggest that, but you can invest in basic science and engineering and you'll get some useful things along the way, radios, maybe repeaters, ever smaller ones and better batteries. But you don't necessarily get a specific thing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sam0x17 7y agoThat said, NIF has been making incremental progress. I think they gain like 5-10% efficiency every 20 years or so. Eventually they will break 100 and we'll have fusion reactors XD