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I agree. I am thinking of my future children or myself into my old age. Even if we don’t get commercial fusion until the 2040s, imagine nearly limitless energy

I agree. I am thinking of my future children or myself into my old age. Even if we don’t get commercial fusion until the 2040s, imagine nearly limitless energy (of course we still need to pay for likely massive capex, R&D, and transmission) and its repercussions! At the very least we can likely pull carbon out of the air faster than we put it in. No more destructive hydropower, no need for fission plants, radically reduced costs for industrial manufacturing. Cheap energy could make raw resource extraction much cheaper and more easily automated. Fast transportation, vertical farming. With the concurrent innovations in battery tech, robotics/automation, and electric vehicles and ships, the future is looking incredibly bright

vlovich123 4y ago
I think you're hand waving too many of the problems away and letting your imagination run way ahead of reality. > no need for fission plants Not sure why this is a goal in and of itself. Everything you said is available today with fission and yet still too expensive to remove CO2. Fission has a more real shot at getting to the right price point before fusion even gets off the ground so why not push for more arrows behind something that's likely to help in our lifetime?
- opportune 4y ago
  Energy is an input to basically every single thing we make or do. In economic models it’s often been found that “technology” parameters (inversely) correlate almost entirely to energy prices. If energy cost very little, we could do previously unviable things like vertically farm and let farmland go back to nature, smelt ore onsite, or run simulations/models for a fraction of what they cost now.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    That’s what I’m saying. Why are you assuming that energy costs for fusion would suddenly be lower? These plants take a lot to build and it’s not like the primary cost for fission is the fuel. It’s the recoupment of massive capex spend, cooling, maintenance, highly trained personnel. I’m trying to show you that fusion isn’t going to magically rain energy mana down on us. It’s just fission with less waste (if you discount newer fission designs) except and potentially safer (if you discount newer fission designs) It’s likely significantly more expensive given it’s a more complicated reactor and we’ve built 0 commercially (and even with this achievement we’re not that much closer). My point is, if you’re looking for boundless carbon-free energy, fission reactors already meet all the needs. Additional investments would get reactors that would generate waste competitive with fusion (and in fact can consume all existing generated waste as fuel) and are similarly safe (no runaway reactions). I would encourage you, if you’re serious about carbon-free boundless energy, to devote your advocacy to advancing fission reactors. They’re here and there’s a straightforward R&D path to get the new reactors (regulatory hurdles are another thing). Fusion reactors won’t be here in any reasonable time frame (even if we had a workable design today it would take many decades to build them and then upgrade the grid).

vlovich123 4y ago

I think you're hand waving too many of the problems away and letting your imagination run way ahead of reality. > no need for fission plants Not sure why this is a goal in and of itself. Everything you said is available today with fission and yet still too expensive to remove CO2. Fission has a more real shot at getting to the right price point before fusion even gets off the ground so why not push for more arrows behind something that's likely to help in our lifetime?

opportune 4y ago
Energy is an input to basically every single thing we make or do. In economic models it’s often been found that “technology” parameters (inversely) correlate almost entirely to energy prices. If energy cost very little, we could do previously unviable things like vertically farm and let farmland go back to nature, smelt ore onsite, or run simulations/models for a fraction of what they cost now.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  That’s what I’m saying. Why are you assuming that energy costs for fusion would suddenly be lower? These plants take a lot to build and it’s not like the primary cost for fission is the fuel. It’s the recoupment of massive capex spend, cooling, maintenance, highly trained personnel. I’m trying to show you that fusion isn’t going to magically rain energy mana down on us. It’s just fission with less waste (if you discount newer fission designs) except and potentially safer (if you discount newer fission designs) It’s likely significantly more expensive given it’s a more complicated reactor and we’ve built 0 commercially (and even with this achievement we’re not that much closer). My point is, if you’re looking for boundless carbon-free energy, fission reactors already meet all the needs. Additional investments would get reactors that would generate waste competitive with fusion (and in fact can consume all existing generated waste as fuel) and are similarly safe (no runaway reactions). I would encourage you, if you’re serious about carbon-free boundless energy, to devote your advocacy to advancing fission reactors. They’re here and there’s a straightforward R&D path to get the new reactors (regulatory hurdles are another thing). Fusion reactors won’t be here in any reasonable time frame (even if we had a workable design today it would take many decades to build them and then upgrade the grid).