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Presumably your comment is either to persuade or to inform; it does neither. I'm very curious about this field and its future, do you care to try again?
ITER began building in 2013, first plasma is expected for 2034. DEMO is expected to start in 2040.
So, ITER is taking an estimated 20 years. It's being built for a reason, so I imagine follow-ups want to wait to see how that shakes out. So certainly, DEMO needs to start a few years after ITER is finally done.
Then DEMO isn't a production setup either, it's going to be the first attempt at a working reactor. So let's say optimistically 20 years is enough to build DEMO, run it for a few years, see how it shakes out, design the follow-ups with the lessons learned.
That means the first real, post-DEMO plant starts building somewhere in 2060. Yeah, fair to say a lot of the here present will be dead by then, and that'll only be the slow start of grid fusion if it sticks at all. Nobody is going to just go and build a hundred reactors at once. They'll be built slowly at first unless we somehow manage to start making them amazingly quickly and cheaply.
So that's what, half a century? By the time fusion gets all the kinks worked out, chances are it'll never be commercially viable. Renewables are far faster to build, many problems are solvable by brute force, and half a century is a lot of time to invent something new in the area.
ARC, which uses those high temperature superconductors, is just 40x lower power density.
Neither promises to be competitive with fission, never mind the things beating fission.
This is the reality. It’s not happening. It’s a welfare program for bullshit artists that depends on a credulous public.
The issue right now is cracking the code. Once that is done, performance gains and miniaturization can take place.
Fusion can work on lots of things. Its possible that a fusion system the size of a car could be made within 25 years of the code being cracked that would power a house, or the size of a small building that could power a city block.
The waste product of hydrogen fusion is helium, a valuable resource that will always be in high demand, and it will not be radioactive.
And yes, it will need coolant as with hot fusion the system uses the heat to turn a turbine, but that coolant isn't fancy, it's just water.
Fusion has the potential to solve more problems than it causes by every metric as long as it is doable without extremely limited source materials, and this is what these big expensive reactors are trying to solve.
Quote:
A fusion power plant produces radioactive waste because the high-energy neutrons produced by fusion activate the walls of the plasma vessel. The intensity and duration of this activation depend on the material impinged on by the neutrons.
The walls of the plasma vessel must be temporarily stored after the end of operation. This waste quantity is initially larger than that from nuclear fission plants. However, these are mainly low- and medium-level radioactive materials that pose a much lower risk to the environment and human health than high-level radioactive materials from fission power plants. The radiation from this fusion waste decreases significantly faster than that of high-level radioactive waste from fission power plants. Scientists are researching materials for wall components that allow for further reduction of activation. They are also developing recycling technologies through which all activated components of a fusion reactor can be released after some time or reused in new power plants. Currently, it can be assumed that recycling by remote handling could be started as early as one year after switching off a fusion power plant. Unlike nuclear fission reactors, the long term storage should not be required.
https://www.ipp.mpg.de/2769068/faq9
Basically, whatever containment vessel becomes standard for the whole fusion industry would need probably an annual cycle of vessel replacements, which would be recycled indefinitely and possibly mined for other useful radioactive byproducts in the process.
We are also very bad at anything very long term. We've hardly pulled off any physical project to last more than one generation recently. We barely invest in any.
The winning energy tech of the future better have as little negative externalities as possible, especially long term ones.
Unironically: you’re the first person I’ve come across to openly acknowledge this issue. Thank you.