The only way significant progress on commercial fusion is likely by 2030 is if it's approached by industry and government similarly to how COVID vaccine develop

The only way significant progress on commercial fusion is likely by 2030 is if it's approached by industry and government similarly to how COVID vaccine development was -- everyone drops everything and throws everything they've got at it. Another example of similar financial and institutional commitment would be the Apollo program. This level of commitment will probably only happen if climate change (and the related ecological and economic collapses) are taken as seriously as COVID, which is unlikely since, once the effects become obvious as COVID, it will be too late. And even COVID has large numbers of people denying reality. Even if a massive commitment to fusion started now, by 2030 we'd likely only have a promising proof-of-concept or two, with several more failed projects on the side. Wide-scale deployment would still be years away even with many companies tooling up to start building pilot commercial reactors while assuming high financial risk, since profitability would be far from guaranteed. [edit] Another point of comparison would be semiconductor manufacturing advances over the past 10 years. Tens of billions were spent researching and building factories, and in the end only a few companies made it to 7nm. And that was a clearly profitable endeavor iterating on already proven techniques!