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Fusion power research in the EU is going to cost something like 100B euro for ITER + DEMO. No useful amount of power production is planned for decades. Meanwhi
by jiggawatts 3y ago
Fusion power research in the EU is going to cost something like 100B euro for ITER + DEMO. No useful amount of power production is planned for decades.
Meanwhile, that money could have purchased solar + wind that would provide something like a third or even half of Europe’s electricity needs! That’s not even factoring in ongoing cost reductions over those same decades.
Fission has the same problem: it’s expensive power in the distant future versus cheap power available now.
- jliptzin 3y agoAre we foregoing solar+wind in Europe because that money was diverted to fusion research or is it due to other reasons?
- einpoklum 3y agoIndeed, that's a false dilemma. I could just as well have argued that the money has gone to bailing out banks, or to funding the war in Ukraine, or whatever. Not to mention that money itself is a social construct; it is created by banks and/or the state. If a (sovereign) state wants to, it can print money. Of course this has risks, and sometimes results in currency devaluation (not as frequently as some believe), but it's another way in which one can't claim that "country C invested this much money in A instead of investing in B".
- jupp0r 3y agoFusion power research is research. It's not meant to produce electricity but knowledge.
- jiggawatts 3y agoIt is meant to procure electricity. That’s the entire point. The stated purpose of ITER+DEMO is to develop new power generation technologies!
- hackernews1134 3y agoPower generation technologies, not power itself. The same argument can be made for any r&d, in lieu of spending on alternative technology that already exists. Should we have stopped spending on mRNA vaccines to pay for more socialized healthcare? Or more efficient batteries for better public transport? No one knows the answer to any of these questions because the outcome of r&d is unknown. Some known unknowns but also unknown unknowns. So we do both/all the things to some degree and optimize the degree as we learn more. Alternatives are mostly not mutually exclusive. Edit: formatting
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoMore to the point, research is valuable for the indefinite future, whereas some particular power generator is only valuable during its operating lifetime. Powering half of Europe for three decades sounds like a lot until you compare it to powering all of humanity for the next hundred thousand years.
- holoduke 3y agoLuckily we have people looking into the future and invest in things that bring us new tech.
- jiggawatts 3y agoYes, we’re all very lucky China is investing in solar power instead of blowing taxpayer money on science fiction.
- fastball 3y agoMoney is not fungible in that way when you are talking about 100B EUR of R&D, which is what I was kinda alluding to about expense.