Should we build N Wind turbines or blow the money on more fusion research? I would guess that we need to keep fusion research alive but the real bulk of the money should be for things that will work now.
I'm a big believer in wind and solar, although their intrinsically intermittent operation causes me to also worry about baseload power options, and nuclear fusion is the most attractive and promising development in that field.
I think it's stupid to look at one part of the solution and not at the other(s).
A dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on solar panels or turbines that would displace fossil fuels immediately. And, it would be a dollar wasted, because the fusion work will never produce any commercially competitive power, anyway. So, it is a choice between buying something that contributes to a solution, or just pissing it away.
I see this claim a lot, but what makes this true? Why would money allocation be so inelastic, and why can't it become flexible?
Or am I missing something?
No one knows the future but with the way things have gone so far, fusion in its current form looks like a giant waste of time and money.
Few lack that experience.
Anyways, at the scale of international project budgets, "killing fusion to increase money spent on other green projects" is, at this point, like not buying a daily coffee so you can afford a car.
Even pessimistic estimates of ITER's cost are still under $100B for a 5 decade long project. Or, put another way, less than $2 billion dollars a year. There are highway interchanges that have cost that much. And the EU and the US alone of ITER's contributors have a combined GDP of $35 trillion.