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I see no physical limitations. There are engineering hurdles primarily addressed by materials. Making HTS coils cheaply is a big deal and a WIP problem. Test

I see no physical limitations. There are engineering hurdles primarily addressed by materials. Making HTS coils cheaply is a big deal and a WIP problem. Test reactors such as ITER and SPARC need to be built as platforms to experiment with first wall and blanket designs. Making nuclear facilities is expensive. I personally do not see any showstoppers here, just expensive work that needs to be done. Will fusion ever be economical? I don't have a crystal ball, but properly charging for the economic cost of carbon emissions is necessary before answering that question. I also can't predict how much cheaper reactors would be than test machines and how long they would run for. The science needs to be funded to answer these questions. When society decides these answers are worth 5x F-35s then we'll have our answers.

wolverine876 5y ago
Thanks! One quibble: > The science needs to be funded to answer these questions. When society decides these answers are worth 5x F-35s then we'll have our answers. Isn't society funding ITER for $22 billion, and much else? The American and UK people are investing in some of the companies, per the OP.
- willis936 5y ago
  The 5x F-35 is hyperbole. ITER is currently being funded and does account for about 80% of the current global fusion research budget. Fair enough, its results will be valuable. US pulling of funding throughout the Reagan era slowed progress by a few decades. We won't make up that lost time no matter how much money we spend. For now all the eggs are in the basket and we wait for the results. MIT's HTS coil winding is the space to watch now imo. If it isn't all smoke and mirrors then we could see real test reactors for less money than ITER in our lifetime.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Having less money might have increased progress. I tend to agree with my old boss, David Montgomery, that the eagerness to build big machines distracted the community from investigating the basic plasma physics and hydrodynamics that we needed to understand first.
    - willis936 5y ago
      It's not an eagerness to build big machines because they are fun, but out of necessity to push the experimental regime forward. Given constrained budgets theory has continued to thrive. Cutting edge turbulence models are being made by theoretical plasma physicists. This is a problem no other engineer wants to touch with a 10 foot pole yet has incredibly far-reaching implications for many engineering fields.

wolverine876 5y ago

Thanks! One quibble: > The science needs to be funded to answer these questions. When society decides these answers are worth 5x F-35s then we'll have our answers. Isn't society funding ITER for $22 billion, and much else? The American and UK people are investing in some of the companies, per the OP.

willis936 5y ago
The 5x F-35 is hyperbole. ITER is currently being funded and does account for about 80% of the current global fusion research budget. Fair enough, its results will be valuable. US pulling of funding throughout the Reagan era slowed progress by a few decades. We won't make up that lost time no matter how much money we spend. For now all the eggs are in the basket and we wait for the results. MIT's HTS coil winding is the space to watch now imo. If it isn't all smoke and mirrors then we could see real test reactors for less money than ITER in our lifetime.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Having less money might have increased progress. I tend to agree with my old boss, David Montgomery, that the eagerness to build big machines distracted the community from investigating the basic plasma physics and hydrodynamics that we needed to understand first.
  - willis936 5y ago
    It's not an eagerness to build big machines because they are fun, but out of necessity to push the experimental regime forward. Given constrained budgets theory has continued to thrive. Cutting edge turbulence models are being made by theoretical plasma physicists. This is a problem no other engineer wants to touch with a 10 foot pole yet has incredibly far-reaching implications for many engineering fields.