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It seems the anti-nuclear crowd on HN always points out the cost/MWH vs wind/solar as a sort of coup des grace against nuclear but I have never understood that argument. Can someone help me to understand how the same reasoning couldn't be applied to fusion entrepreneurship as well? The cost per MWH for fusion right now is infinity because we can't _yet_ get net energy gain. Should the current inefficiency stop innovation and investment?

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Yes. There is no rational reason to expect fusion will produce a single watt of practical, commercial power in the lifetime of the grandchildren of anyone reading this. The most optimistic estimate of power density of a productive plasma is so low that a practical fusion plant would need to be tens or hundreds of times as large as a current nuke. Then, it would destroy itself in a short time, leaving hundreds of tons of more-or-less radioactive waste.

Fusion research is a jobs program for high-neutron-flux physicists, to provide a population to draw on for weapons work. There has never been an expectation of practical power generation, and its prospects fall as renewables continue getting cheaper.

Fusion is ridiculous. It will make fission look simple and cheap by comparison. Those investing in it are pouring money into a bottomless pit. And this would be true even if the plasma confinement issues were 100% solved.

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