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Don't forget that ITER is a big research project that tries to answer a lot of questions and put things together into a working prototype. That's not as shiny a
by spaetzleesser 5y ago
Don't forget that ITER is a big research project that tries to answer a lot of questions and put things together into a working prototype. That's not as shiny as doing interesting things in selected areas but somebody has to start building a whole machine. I think by design it will be outdated by the time it's done but that's a good thing. Somebody has to go first and pave the way for the next generation.
Considering the potential payoff of fusion I believe this money is spent way better than than on things like returning to the moon or a lot of defense projects.
- pfdietz 5y agoITER is what happens when you focus on a shorter term goal and not a longer term goal. ITER's goal is fine, except that there's no way to extend what ITER is doing to a power plant that could be economically competitive (not even competitive with fission, never mind renewables). A fusion reactor that could be competitive must take a different approach, like one involving advanced fuels. This would make ITER's goal much harder (and would likely rule out tokamaks entirely), but the long term goal easier.