An international competition with a wider array of technology and more iterative could have achived more.
If you look how far some organisations get with tiny amounts of funding.
- Small, incremental, predictable improvements, due to more accurate modelling, tighter tolerances, bigger budgets, etc.
- Big breakthroughs, usually on shoestring budgets.
The largest impact comes from the latter, but they're very rare and unpredictable. We might fund thousands of small projects over decades and see nothing particularly substantial.
Big budget projects are riskier, since we can't fund many of them. Hence these tend to be the first type of project: where we can be quite confident on the capabilities and outcomes, so we'll see some improvement; even though it might not be as promising as the possibilities claimed by umpteen smaller projects.
It's also easier for individual institutions, companies, countries, etc. to fund smaller projects themselves. There's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;)
But that is not the case in fusion. We had many advances in fusion by small companies.
> here's no point wading through the politics required to pool resources into a large international collaboration, if we're just going to divide up those resources between a bunch of small projects anyway ;)
I do understand the political problem. However still it could be collaboration for a contest, rather then organize this project as a multi country technical problem.
And I would even be happy with just 3-5 projects that get many, many billions in the end. I mean lets be honest, if it costs $20 billion (and lets be honest it will be way more) to develop it will never be economical anyway.
There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement.
It would also create a large fusion industry with different companies going into 'supplier' mode and so on.
It's a science project. It doesn't have to be economical. It is there to establish the path to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Station
> There are lots and lots of people who would be happy to get a couple million for some fusion projects. Others believe they could build a break even project with 10s millions. And we could reinforce projects that make rapid advancement.
Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there.
Its a wildly expensive science project that produces far less science and far more overhead and waste.
And as we have already established, for such a long project it gets overtaken by technology.
And the 'powerstation' will cost billions upon billions more and it will still not even be close to economical.
> Many people believe many things. There's a reason we do ITER: It has the best chance to actually work, unlike all the "cheap" 'hey, I'm a genius, I can do it with far less money!' projects out there.
By what definition of 'work'? They might manage to get break even if they throw enough money at it. But if you had said, any project that shows break even can get 1 billion. That would be an effective use of money.
An I'm not saying any of these projects should get 20 billion because they think they are smarter. But how about getting 2 million and if you show impressive results you get 20 million and then maybe 200 million.
Maybe fusion won't matter anyway. If it arrives too late, power usage will have been restructured to fit the unreliability of sun/wind/minor power generation, and fusion's ability to provide steadily is something that users have learned to do without. Learned at great cost.
And the advances in theory are actually incredibly important if you want to build an actual plant.
But then again, for stable power fission does basically everything fusion does for you. The difference between fission and fusion are tiny compared to chemical energy.
What I wrote was that power uses may well have learned to do without by the time fusion energy becomes available. AFAICT that might happen sometime after 2050, maybe closer to 2100.
Assume that energy users do not learn to cope with just renewables. In that case CO₂ emissions go as at present, ie. the CO₂ content in the atmosphere increases by about 2.25ppm/year. In 2050 that works out to about 500ppm and in 2100 to 600ppm (these are conservativish numbers, since they assume that the 2.25ppm/year stays flat while in reality it has been increasing steadily).
ITER is not thought to lead all the way to fusion power; at least one more round of experiments is required afterwards. The Wikipedia page mentions 2035, so assuming that the next round also takes 20 years and only one more round is necessary, the first actual fusion reactors could start construction around 2055, and large amounts of fusion power could perhaps be available around 2075 or 2095, when CO₂ content is 550-600ppm. This is absurdly high, therefore the assumption is untenable.
Learn or die.
High capital cost systems, like what fusion reactors will be, are ruined economically if they can only charge a lot only a small fraction of the time. They will find it impossible to compete against sources with low capital cost but high operating cost (like, say, turbines operated off hydrogen produced at times of low power prices). The latter may have horrible round trip efficiency, but that won't matter.
"And the advantages in theory..."
What advantages are those? Fusion has inherent DISadvantages that are fundamental, most importantly low volumetric power density compared to fission reactors.
There batteries, nuclear, gas and so on will compete.
> High capital cost systems, like what fusion reactors will be
That is not necessary true. Look at aneutronic fusion for example.
> What advantages are those? Fusion has inherent DISadvantages that are fundamental, most importantly low volumetric power density compared to fission reactors.
I was talking about advances in the theocratic understanding of plamsa and how fusion happens.
I can't discern the logic behind what you are trying to say there. How does nuclear compete?
So I agree that we should probably pump more money into more projects when it comes to nuclear research but I don't think it means that we should take it from ITER.
However, the fission budget is not gone grow, saying you would rather have less aircraft carriers is simply not gone work politically.
Fusion has less hurdles then fission, but its still incredibly difficult to do.