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From the article:"The role for fusion would not be, “Oh, we’ve invented it. Let’s not bother building more wind turbines.” It would be, “We’ve invented it. Is t
by embwbam 4y ago
From the article:"The role for fusion would not be, “Oh, we’ve invented it. Let’s not bother building more wind turbines.” It would be, “We’ve invented it. Is this a better way than our alternative options to fill in the gaps and supply the last bit?”"
I think this is absolutely wrong. Limitless cheap energy will create unprecedented demand for new, previously wasteful ideas. Think about how energy availability made climate-controlled houses possible. Now try to imagine how future capitalists will sell us something previously unimaginable with a 10x or 100x energy supply.
- megaman821 4y agoI think people are over-estimating how cheap fusion would be in practice. Fusion only makes sense on a large scale. Maybe your electricity is 1 cent a kilowatt but it comes from 50 gigawatt plant in Ohio. You need trillions of dollars in transmission upgrades to move that cheap power around the country. It is a very similar problem to putting millions of solar panels in the desert.
- DennisP 4y agoThat entirely depends on which designs work out. Helion's production reactor would be 50MW with an estimated cost of 1 cent/kWh.
- socialdemocrat 4y agoIt will never be cheap and limitless though. Is solar power isn’t free even if you don’t have to pay for the sunshine. It is the capital costs which gets you and those will very much apply to something as complex as fusion.
- marssaxman 4y agoWhy would fusion power necessarily be limitless or cheap? Even if a friendly alien starship chose to beam us down a production-ready fusion reactor as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift, it'd be kind of a white elephant: the steam-turbine generator we'd have to build in order to capture the reactor's power output as electricity would cost more than we'd spend on equivalent renewables.