Comment by yc1010 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yc1010 | Hacker News Reader

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Climate change called and states that she doesn't care about your skepticism, renewables alone will not bring us into carbon free future.

We have to try EVERYTHING in order to beat climate change, up to and including moonshots like this.

Sadly this strange hatred of anything nuclear by environmentalists has done more to harm this planet and its people.

BTW 6 billion is nothing when compared to over a hundred billion that for example Germany has spent on renewables, same Germany that replacing nuclear with coal on the other hand.

Aside was just watching this documentary on BBC on tv there > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtp51eZkwoI The vision and drive of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs back in 19th and 20th centuries have lifted the world from literal darkness into the modern system of grids and electricity on a flick of a switch. I am sure there were many naysayers back in their day on top of all the obstacles they faced, these guys such as Edison and his team kept buggering on, and the modern world is thankful for foundations they laid.

Let the scientists and engineers at ITER do their job and instead of moaning about it keep pressure on politicians to spend money on projects like this instead of bombing people in other countries.

> renewables alone will not bring us into carbon free future.

They certainly can, and going 100% renewable by 2050 is feasible. [1] Once you add in nuclear, it's only more feasible (though maybe more expensive).

Taking a look at the five potential plans for the UK from 2009 [2], they are now much more potentially feasible as solar and storage technology has plummeted in price far more quickly than anticipated.

It's only a matter of political feasibility, not engineering or industrial feasibility. That's why these plans need to be reevaluated every 12 months, because technology for renewables is changing so much more quickly than any of the conventional technologies do, and the boundary for economic feasibility is quickly quickly shifting.

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Count...

[2] http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_203.shtml

It's interesting that you bring up climate change in the context of fusion. Because even in optimistic scenarios fusion will only play a role in a couple of decades. If we want to do something about climate change we have to do it within the next 10-20 years - and nuclear fusion certainly won't play a role in that timeframe.

Also saying you want to try "everything" without considering potential downsides seems strange to me. There's only so much money there to spend. And I think there are other technologies more promising and more needed that would need better funding (e.g. new energy storage methods could need some support).

The 6 billion is not the number this will cost. This is the original number that is now deprecated by a much higher number. And the comparison to the German renewable costs is comparing apples and oranges. Germany spends this money on electricity generation, which is a very different thing from funding a technology which may or may not produce energy in a distant future.

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