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Nonsense. That's all gravy. The cost difference between experiments and reactors is scale. ITER is a good example to point to. If reactors needed to be the size of ITER mankind could never deploy them at scale because we simply don't have the resources. If ITER was 5x smaller: it's a different story.

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> mankind could never deploy them at scale because we simply don't have the resources.

I don't understand what your objection exactly is. That's just a way to rephrase my statement: magnetic confinement, as it stands, is too capital intensive to ever break even financially, regardless of the experimental success ITER/DEMO might have.

I agree if confinement field tops out at 12 T on coil / 6 T on axis. Double it and the story looks very different.

Some light reading on this:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-plasma-ph...

Since ITER's volumetric power density is 400x worse than an existing commercial PWR's reactor (+ its pressure vessel), we'd need quite a bit more than a 5x reduction in volume. Even a 5x reduction in linear dimensions (likely impossible at the same power output, due to wall loading 25x higher) may not be enough.

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