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It’s unjustified because that is one of two variables: difficulty, and funding. Once funding dried up it became a determining variable. As we now see, progress

• jjk166 5y ago
  Nope, one variable, funding was completely irrelevant. All the funding in the world can't give scientists precognition. Progress was always being made, if you look at a plot of reactor performance by year, it's a straight line from the 50s to today. The reason that fusion was 30 years away and always would be is because the knowledge gained revealed our ignorance - we were discovering new issues as fast as we were solving the already discovered ones. That's the problem with cutting edge research - there is no way of knowing ahead of time what trouble you'll run into. Again, the progress didn't stop because funding dried up, funding dried up when it became clear the progress didn't matter. Fusion was appealing at first because it seemed easy, and easy things can typically be done economically. As soon as it became clear that fusion was much harder than initially believed, the hope of building power plants that are economically competitive with more mature alternatives was dashed. New startups can make all the claims they want about how their technology will succeed where others failed, but the fact is until they've actually succeeded, it is impossible for them to say they won't run into unforeseeable problems between now and then. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.