Which country do you think will win the race for sustainable fusion?
Obviously not everything is a race, and adoption matters much more than invention, but was interesting seeing China, France, and Britain's (and I think Canada maybe?) fusion teams one upping their fusion length records. I think my money is still on China, but I'm not a fusion expert so I'm not quite sure hoe far apart all the contenders are from each other.
Definitely betting on China given they're the only major country that is able to do a sustained decades long investment needed to commercialize this tech.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Britain went the rout of the US and just started literally eating coal again. France.... Fuck France.
China all the way baby.
From what I know, China seems firmly is the lead.
I'm still in the "fusion is not viable" camp. It's going to be useful for scientific research, but never power generation.
There is an excellent YouTube video explaining all the challenges for making a commercial fusion power plant, and, in short, no one is even close to a working design.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
i think it will be but only decoupled from capitalism and it's incentive structures entirely. Even if just as efficient as the average fission reactor (which are also not particularly "profitable") the safety and potentially unlimited fuel supply once spun up would make it superior. It will have a potentially fragile fuel cycle at first. And it will never be as quick to deploy as a good solar panel or simple to make as a water wheel or basic generator, this will require an advanced and forward thinking and planning state apparatus.
But there is the potential for scale. scale that could only be matched by a hypothetical megastructure like a space based solar array.
and even if it turns out to truly be a bust for effective power generation there is always use as an advanced space drive
The first nation to actually pull this off will be equivalent to the first to the industrial revolution or oil refining.
China already has literal blueprints for deploying 10-foot tall mini-fusion reactors all over the country and providing nearly limitless, extremely safe free energy, that could last for tens of thousands of years.
I think maybe we can build something smaller than a literal star, but there's no practical way to do fusion even on a planetary scale.
So if we surpass being a Type 1 civilization I guess, a million years after we have abolished capitalism.
Isn't that what was said about nuclear power in general?
And I find it extremely hard to believe, that millions of moving actors/parts, scientists, and companies all over the world would be investing in something specifically for power generation, if it wasn't viable.