I have hope that fusion energy is indeed only a few years away now, not always some decades. It would be just in time so to speak. Can we throw like 1/10 of the US military budget against this tech and have it solved?
Also note that the Wendelstein 7-X project started planning in 1980 and assembly took from 2005 until 2014. A US reactor experiment (the NCSX) was cancelled in 2009 because they couldn't get the required mechanical precision even in a lab setting. Even if we manage to solve the remaining technical challenges to sustained fusion in only five years (ie WAY ahead of the experimental schedule), building a power plant sized version would definitely take a decade or two including all the planning and actual construction.
More budget will probably help speed up the timeline somewhat but probably not that much. If you truly had 1/10th of the military budget to spend you could probably get a much bigger bang for your buck if you spend it on solar panels, batteries and on shoring up coastal defences/stormwater systems/building insulation/etc etc etc. The boring stuff, rather than the "silver bullet" projects like fusion power plants.
Next stop in research: divertor design. Right now the divertor is still a challenge, as it heats up too much when the plasma gets hotter. You can see it in the video, the area that gets really bright in IR.
After the divertor is figured out, the blanket comes next. Neutron embrittlement of the structure is another issue. So power generation is still way out there.
Still, a great day for plasma physicists over the world. Decades of hard work went into this. Congrats!
Fusion might just be the clean „baseline“ supply we need
In theory, OFC.
And yeah, so can a nuclear reactor of course, but if it manages to blow up halfway it would poison half the earth. Yet fusion reactors are safe.
What if we told NASA engineers they can use a gigawatt of power to drive ion engines?
The applications of this kind of power go far beyond keeping apartments warm.