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Comment by zbobet2012 | Hacker News Reader

zbobet2012·

A quick peruse through this wikipedia article will tell you what still needs done, and what this means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

Give it a read. Intertial confinement fusion with a Q > 1 may very well point the way towards a realistic powerplant. Fusion is at a point it deserves investment. The NIF cost about the same as a single b-2 bomber.

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Total annual US public research into fusion that is not ITER or this project (which does not come from the fusion pot. As others have said this project was built for weapons research) is about $300 million per year[1]. We, as a country, do not give a rats ass about having fusion as a power source. VC funding recently (for the first time) supported many fusion startup ideas at or above the $300 million level. Too bad ZIRP is over and private funding is now likely to dry up. The recent private funding in fusion was really amazing. Many new ideas and methods are being tried. This is what fusion research needed. Not spending billions on magnets and cement in France that is ITER. Hopefully some of them have a long enough runway to get promising work done and get follow-up funding.

[1]http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/images...

We may be certain, anyway, that all the startups will spend all the money they get. There will be no power generated. The investors will not get any of their money back.

That would be fine, except some of the investors are pension funds.

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