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Every time I read news about fusion and all the optimism surrounding it, I always remember this 1983 paper that categorically proves how fusion will never happe

• tuatoru 6y ago
  That's a good discusssion of the technical objections to fusion. There is also this paper[1] from 2018 which shows that fusion will have higher capital cost than anything else. (The abstract reads like it was produced by fusion enthusiasts. They were using historical figures for PV and for on-shore and off-shore wind, and using the LCOE method which IIRC uses "overnight construction" assumptions.) There is also the point that a higher investment hurdle rate is appropriate for fusion as it's an untried risky technology. Another paper points out that fusion economics are particularly sensitive to unplanned outages. (More modular and dispersed generation methods are of course less sensitive than gas or coal to outages, e.g. plane crash.) So, fusion had its chance. Now we have cheaper alternatives, which are getting cheaper still. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218305395 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421... Approximation of the economy of fusion energy