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I'm an old man, and pretty much my entire adult life, we've had fusion energy as being "just ten years away." Given this is the era of zero-consequence big lie

I'm an old man, and pretty much my entire adult life, we've had fusion energy as being "just ten years away." Given this is the era of zero-consequence big lies, Nucor and Helion just shifting the horizon a bit to greenwash their operations. I'll see it when I believe it.

placesalt 3y ago
The meme was that fusion was always 30 years away. This is obviously a lot closer, so if nothing else it doesn't deserve to be tarred with that brush.
justin66 3y ago
I cannot find it via google (so perhaps I'm remembering it wrong), but DoE or NSF created in the seventies - as part of some larger report - what I thought was a fairly well known chart guesstimating the time needed to develop working fusion energy generation, based on how much money was spent on the endeavor. The idea being that to do it relatively quickly we'd have to spend a pretty extravagant amount of money on research and development, and as the amount of money spent decreased the timeline extended further into the future. The unintended joke was/is that the U.S. has never spent anywhere close to the amount money the DoE estimated was needed to develop fusion power, so we haven't even tested the accuracy of the chart.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Here is the chart. I wouldn't call $3B/year in 2012 dollars an extravagant amount of spending for a program, which is the level the authors call "moderate." https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fu...
  - justin66 3y ago
    Thanks. I'll have to brush up on the details of this report, it's been a while. I read recently that in total, the US has spent about $50 billion dollars on fusion energy generation research over the years. Regardless of the chart's usefulness, that puts us in the "fusion never" realm of the chart.

placesalt 3y ago

The meme was that fusion was always 30 years away. This is obviously a lot closer, so if nothing else it doesn't deserve to be tarred with that brush.

justin66 3y ago

I cannot find it via google (so perhaps I'm remembering it wrong), but DoE or NSF created in the seventies - as part of some larger report - what I thought was a fairly well known chart guesstimating the time needed to develop working fusion energy generation, based on how much money was spent on the endeavor. The idea being that to do it relatively quickly we'd have to spend a pretty extravagant amount of money on research and development, and as the amount of money spent decreased the timeline extended further into the future. The unintended joke was/is that the U.S. has never spent anywhere close to the amount money the DoE estimated was needed to develop fusion power, so we haven't even tested the accuracy of the chart.

whatshisface 3y ago
Here is the chart. I wouldn't call $3B/year in 2012 dollars an extravagant amount of spending for a program, which is the level the authors call "moderate." https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fu...
- justin66 3y ago
  Thanks. I'll have to brush up on the details of this report, it's been a while. I read recently that in total, the US has spent about $50 billion dollars on fusion energy generation research over the years. Regardless of the chart's usefulness, that puts us in the "fusion never" realm of the chart.