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Some years ago, likely around 2010, I had the priviledge to visit Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (it was called UKAEA Culham back then). During my visit, we we

Some years ago, likely around 2010, I had the priviledge to visit Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (it was called UKAEA Culham back then). During my visit, we were shown around various experiments and after a long evening, we had the opportunity to attend a Q&A with the staff. The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was When will it be ready? The scientists and everyone else involved honestly thought 10 years would be more than enough time for the technology to mature and find its way into everyday lives. Commercial fusion energry, always 5-10 years away.

AQuantized 6y ago
About 15 years ago my physics professor told me fusion would always be 20 years away, so at least we're getting progressively shorter times away.
- ajakate 6y ago
  Reminds me a little of this xkcd on the James Webb delays: https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/
kzrdude 6y ago
People underestimate time. I'll do something very HN and compare with software. When did Git get really good? Finished, mainstream? It took a good ten years for it to be really established. And that's just for a simple hack of an idea, that needed this time to be fleshed out.
deleted 6y ago
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Corazoor 6y ago
Well, they were not exactly wrong. Humanity as a collective would have been able to push the technology to a usable level in that timeframe, the knowledge for that was certainly there. But it would have required spending quite a lot more money on it. The incentives for that were simply not there, and that remains still true today. With the current level of investment and committment, it's more like 40-50 years for the first real generator, and another 10-20 until the first commercial one.
mjevans 6y ago
There's a mythical man month issue in that even with unlimited budget and resources progress can only proceed so fast, even with the best people to learn from the experiments. However there's also just the actual literal cost of RnD. There's no hard cost in budget either. It's more like an apples to oranges comparison, but look at the progress that SpaceX has made in commercial space flight, and that's AFTER we've established that it's possible with all of the path-finding missions in the half century prior. Fundamental research is an investment in the future. Aside from ensuring that the basic levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1) are met, funding research that expands the public infrastructure and public domain of knowledge of how the world works, and third designs for common industrial infrastructure, such as power generation. Commercial fusion would be either much closer to reality or known to be infeasible with current technology if research were funded both adequately and predictably (so people could make careers and lives in that). (1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

AQuantized 6y ago

About 15 years ago my physics professor told me fusion would always be 20 years away, so at least we're getting progressively shorter times away.

ajakate 6y ago
Reminds me a little of this xkcd on the James Webb delays: https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/

kzrdude 6y ago

People underestimate time. I'll do something very HN and compare with software. When did Git get really good? Finished, mainstream? It took a good ten years for it to be really established. And that's just for a simple hack of an idea, that needed this time to be fleshed out.

deleted 6y ago

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Corazoor 6y ago

Well, they were not exactly wrong. Humanity as a collective would have been able to push the technology to a usable level in that timeframe, the knowledge for that was certainly there. But it would have required spending quite a lot more money on it. The incentives for that were simply not there, and that remains still true today. With the current level of investment and committment, it's more like 40-50 years for the first real generator, and another 10-20 until the first commercial one.

mjevans 6y ago

There's a mythical man month issue in that even with unlimited budget and resources progress can only proceed so fast, even with the best people to learn from the experiments. However there's also just the actual literal cost of RnD. There's no hard cost in budget either. It's more like an apples to oranges comparison, but look at the progress that SpaceX has made in commercial space flight, and that's AFTER we've established that it's possible with all of the path-finding missions in the half century prior. Fundamental research is an investment in the future. Aside from ensuring that the basic levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1) are met, funding research that expands the public infrastructure and public domain of knowledge of how the world works, and third designs for common industrial infrastructure, such as power generation. Commercial fusion would be either much closer to reality or known to be infeasible with current technology if research were funded both adequately and predictably (so people could make careers and lives in that). (1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs