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Comment by johlindenbaum | Hacker News Reader

I think "a few years" is optimistic. I would assume a lot of the community is holding its breath to see how ITER fares once it's switched on in 8-12 years. Nobody knows for certain if it's possible to generate a plasma on earth that can heat itself, and then produce excess energy. And by that time the anti-fusion lobby will have poisoned the mind of the average power user to believe that fusion = fission.

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I doubt it. There isn't much ITER can do that will surprise anybody. Even if it works perfectly, it still won't produce economical fusion. People already know that if you want practical fusion you've got a huge opportunity to bypass ITER.

Wait, there's an antifusion lobby? Who are they?

But yeah, people will still think negative when hearing about "nuclear". Maybe we should change that to "Atomic" to make the distinction and give it a less negative connotation :-).

Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron...

I can't find any examples of any of them lobbying against fusion (which is unsurprising, since lobbying against something that is currently impossible is not a good use of funds).

Those are mostly oil financiers providing capital to contractors who do the work, and project management. They won't care. Too much oil is used for transport and petrochemical (aka plastic) industry.

Some of the peculiar niche uses for petrochems are much less price sensitive than bunker A boiler oil, so they would make more money overall in the long run if people used oil more wisely, which sounds weird but is an economic truth. You care a lot about the price of gas in your car, but you probably don't really care about the cost of plastic in your legos, so if it went up by 10x it would still be a rounding error at the checkout line although in the long run they'd make more money.

The coal companies, on the other hand, are likely concerned.

If anything, they'd be the first to invest in working fusion technology. They already invest billions in alternative energy research - to secure their own domination in the future, but still...

From what I understand its mostly a materials problem because the plasma just erodes everything.

There's an anti-fusion lobby?

Just the people who've been hearing "fusion is right around the corner!" for the last 40 years.

It was editorial license by johlindenbaum to call it an "anti-fusion" lobby, but we can all agree that there's a pro-fossil-fuel lobby.

Greenpeace is very outspoken against fusion, as they believe it carries the same dangers as fission. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/IT...

Greenpeace and others. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/IT...

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