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ITER has been working on this problem for almost a decade now, and with more money available to them. What are the odds some startup can beat them to the punch?

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> ITER has been working on this problem for almost a decade now

ITER has been working on one implementation of magnetic confinement. It's an international effort, bringing to the battle the advantages of scale and disadvantages of multilateral bureaucracy.

Since ITER was formed in 2007 [1], the bleeding edge has advanced beyond Tokomaks. Advanced computational methods birthed the Wendelstein 7-X [2]. Improved superconducting magnets are compacting designs, reducing costs--and thus accessibility to start-ups--through mass reduction.

It's almost likely a start-up beats ITER. And that's fine! I don't know if any of these designs would be where they are if ITER hadn't been funded.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Organization_history

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X

As odd as it counts ITER is not about efficiency, it’s more about research into construction and operations.

We could have built a fusion reactor in the 90’s simply scaling up JET, but the amount of power that would be produced was not worth the investment. For example we lack the tritium production to keep up with even a single 1GW fusion reactor let alone a large scale deployment. So, we need to be able to produce it or get by with mostly DD reactions.

That’s just one of thousands of issues being investigated.

You're right about better superconductors leading to more compact and cheaper reactor designs, but many, if not most, of those designs are still tokamaks. To say that the bleeding edge has moved beyond tokamaks is just wrong.

To take your example of Wendelstein 7-X, the only sources I can find give an expected Q factor of 0.1. JET was getting 0.75 ages ago. ITER will hopefully hit 10. While I'm excited about stellarators because they're very interesting to research, they probably won't be catching up to tokamaks any time soon.

>ITER will hopefully hit 10.

As a layman, is it right to think that this would mean viable fusion has arrived at that point? I mean, 10x energy out/in is a victory, no? Is there another factor that stops ITER from being immediately used and replicated for energy generation?

Yes and no.

ITER will be first device to produce more heat energy than put in, but it won't be generating any electricity. [1] It will instead be used to make research on, so we can plan the next project, codenamed DEMO.

DEMO will produce net energy, but still be experimental, for designing final version of a commercial fusion power plant. And that commercial plant is aimed to be working by 2050. [2]

ITER is rather looked upon as risk-free and certain way to fusion, whereas startups... are startups. IMHO, we need both approaches.

Also there are many more fusion startups than General Fusion, here are some to follow:

- Tokamak Energy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuSlFJbBUIj1zfJLRnGXSow - LPP Fusion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiBditpj7sdROMYz02qoCMQ - TAE Technologies: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-LHpK7z8vjMq2-pt4wG4ug - Commonwealth Fusion Systems: https://cfs.energy - First Light Fusion: https://firstlightfusion.com

1: https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines 2: https://www.iter.org/mag/3/22

Well, DEMO, the demonstration power station to follow ITER is estimated to have a Q of 25 and output of 2GW. Whether that's viable will then be less about the physics and more about the cost that they can get subsequent designs down to when they have to compete with high capacity factor offshore wind, battery firmed utility solar, pumped hydro, etc. in 2040. It'll be a fascinating engineering challenge. I hope they can make it happen, but I doubt it.

The next big problem after hitting positive energy production will be sustainability. My understanding is that the walls of the reactor get hit with enough stray neutrons that they degrade (often in radioactive ways). Unlike in fission reactors where you can put in a lot of absorptive shielding (like lead), in a fusion reactor you have to keep the magnets close to what they are working on.

Note, I am not talking about really long term radioactive waste here, more like things that are dangerous for less than 100 years. Still problematic, but not for millions of years like fission.

No. The notion that achieving a certain plasma physics performance means viable fusion has arrived is a very common misconception. It's quite possible that even if the plasma physics problems are well solved, fusion could end up never being viable, for engineering/economic reasons.

For General Fusion they have a completely different approach. It's not a Tokamak like ITER. It remains to be seen if it works at scale though.

Commonwealth Fusion also thinks they can move faster than ITER with a Tokamak reactor, by utilising new and better superconductors. I suppose the design of ITER was locked down before those became available in large quantities.

ITER is taking the safest approach, and being a giant international cooperation makes them probably as flexible and nimble as a boulder. A startup betting on a novel, cheaper approach could beat them as long as they accept a much higher risk of failure. And while a government wouldn't invest $100M in something with say 10% chance of success, compared to $6B for ITER that's a worthwile bet for everyone else

> And while a government wouldn't invest $100M in something with say 10% chance of success, compared to $6B for ITER that's a worthwile bet for everyone else

Maybe governments should. That’s doesn’t seem like a large amount of money in the scheme of things and I’d rather the tech not belong to a startup.

In an ideal world, government would invest in many more low-probability/high-impact engineering projects. But this doesn't align well with political incentives - 100M on a bet that will return 50X 10% of the time is great for a private investor, but a politician won't get 50X the votes from a successful project as an unsuccessful one, instead there's a 90% chance the project will be portrayed as a boondoggle.

The problem with investing in a lot of low probability things is that when, say, 100 of them all fail, how do you know whether that's because they were low probability, or zero probability? Unfortunately, there's no limit to the number of very low probability things you can invest in, so nobody has the budget for them all.

it's also not ideal for government to make those sorts of bets, because they is no reasonable incentive structure for the government to 1) find the talent to make correct bets about those sorts of things and 2) to be accountable in case the person making those bets is just an garden variety idiot, or, worse, taking the government for a ride.

Also, those relatively small investments of $100M will add up to a lot over time. At some point people are going to get a bit sour on the idea of acting like an angle investor with tax dollars.

Why does it matter if the tech belongs to a startup? If any of these projects ever actually works, 1) they're still going to be very capital-intensive, and 2) it's still going to be a private company that builds the production plants. Patent exclusivity only lasts a couple of decades anyway, so personally I'd rather go with whatever approach gets us commercial fusion power in my lifetime.

I’m a firm believer that any sort of fundamental research and their outcomes should be owned by the public. We may have to contract a company to build the thing, but the knowledge should be free for all.

Then what incentive is there for investment into R&D if it doesn’t give a competitive advantage? Patents are designed to encourage investment by providing a monopoly for an exclusive time only - we can debate how long that should be - but the fundamental fact is that without patents innovation slows greatly

I agree. I wonder though how these kinds of funding decisions could be made without too much money just funneled to friends of the reviewers pet projects. Its not like you can just put out a bid for cheap fusion and award the lowest bidder.

I think another factor is that it is much harder to defend high risk investment from corruption and cronyism.

"Safest" here being the approach that physics and enfineering say is most likely to succeed: project risk, not actual safety risk.

(Ironically it was so large that until it shaken up, the project nearly sank for the usual "megaproject drama" reasons)

I'll link to the NAS report on fusion findings. US benefits from ITER partnerships work both ways. But also recommends investments in smaller, less expensive, more innovative (and therefore competitive) designs.

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?Rec...

Just to put things in perspective. ITER budget is estimated ~$25B. Seeking to produce >500MW with a 12T magnetic field. Massive radius. Twice any previous tokamak size. Just look at the pictures ;)

JET budget was ~$5B total. And achieved 25MW with a 5T coil. But without actually "burning plasma" (Max Q < 1.0)

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab run by DoE budget is >$100M per annum. So this represents a significant challenge, and not just in fund raising.

The most promising space might be in the design of "mini-magnets"

https://nationalmaglab.org/news-events/news/lbc-project-worl...

How can one presume that the multi-national, highly political, very long term ITER program is the definitive source of truth?

technically, they are persuing a completely different mechanism. In my opinion it's totally bonkers, but in principle there is no reason why the spend/return should be correlated.

Happens all the time with other kinds of startups. The main thing with this is having a good skillset and a good idea.

A good skillset and a good idea is the "main thing" if you want to make a software product.

What you need with fusion is fundamentally new science, not just an idea to pound into shape. That's rather a taller order than a disruptive crowd-scale gig play in the power industry.

Well, GF is using a liquid metal liner to compress their plasma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=77&v=k3zcmPmW6dE...

Oddly, I remember a UFO TV show describing the alien powerplant as relying on liquid metal in some way. No idea if that is meaningful.

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