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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I question your assumption that most people who bring this up are people invested in MCF or various private companies.

I think for most people, the question isn't between this fusion and that fusion, it's about fusion and anything else.

We haven't yet been able to get useable energy out of fusion. It may be wonderful if we could, but at the moment, every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines.

If it really is the case that it will not be possible to power the world without fusion, then that might be money well invested, but it's quite possible that we should just be putting everything into existing renewable technologies.

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>It may be wonderful if we could, but at the moment, every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines.

You care to back your armchairing with data? I'll bet you 100usd that it's a pittance compared to what goes into solar and wind turbines world wide. This point is not salient.

>I think for most people, the question isn't between this fusion and that fusion, it's about fusion and anything else.

That's a more valid point. The point for ICF is the potential, this is a sure push in the direction of "this actually has potential," justifying more research, not that we'll have a power plant in 5 years. There isn't this antagonism towards other aspirational research like superconductors or quantum computers.

>> every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines.

> You care to back your armchairing with data?

I'm confused by your confusion. I'm literally saying we could optionally be spending the money we currently spend on fusion on solar panels instead. This isn't a statement that needs data.

The question is simply which is going to go further in decarbonizing our energy: $1 spent on solar or $1 spent on fusion research?

That's an open question, of course, and people don't have the answer, since one is based on probabilities of future success.

Note, though, that even if fusion is successful, it may still be more expensive than solar, and so then would it actually be successful? We would have saved more tons of CO2 by making more solar panels. [1] [2] [3]

1. https://www.wired.com/story/no-fusion-energy-wont-be-limitle...

2. https://futurism.com/elon-musk-fusion-more-expensive-wind-so...

3. https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2023/03/16/fusions-fu...

> I'm literally saying we could optionally be spending the money we currently spend on fusion on solar panels instead. This isn't a statement that needs data.

We can’t. Who is picking between fusion research and 7% IRR solar projects? Two totally different risk profiles.

> We would have saved more tons of CO2 by making more solar panels.

If that’s your sole metric it’s probably worth thinking a little broader towards a solution. I don’t think Mohammed bin Salman is going to cap Ghawar Field because we put up a bunch of solar panels over here. He’s going to sell to somebody else.

I think it’s better to let the market work towards solutions that compete across all dimensions—density included—and let that drive the energy transition.

So the question is, what is a better energy infrastructure investment—definitely spending a dollar on fusion research, or not spending that dollar on fusion research and instead maybe, in theory, spending it on solar panels. I’ll take the good plan now vs the maybe a better plan later option.

"Solar vs. Fusion" isn't really important as long as trillions of $/€/£/... are sunk into fossil fuel extraction and use ?

There's plenty to reaearch in Solar Panels still as well - Perovskite is hot now, but other material systems, engineering optimisation, inverter efficiencies, BIPV, non-Li-Ion battery systems, all these and then some are actively researched and developed right now. And not all of that will productise. Yet, move money off fossil subsidies to those first ... and only after bash nuclear, whether fission or fusion.

Even if fusion is the energy source of the future and will always be that - fossil fuels are that of the past. They shall be, or remain, buried. This really isn't about renewable vs. renewable.

Comparing basic science research with commercial product research is comparing apples with oranges.

Governments spend research money on space research, particle accelerator, fusion research, basic medical research, and similar that do not intend to turn a profit. National Institutes of Health for example spends more on basic medical research than all of industry combined. The health industry takes that research and uses it to develop products, which combined R&D are several times that of the budget of NiH. $1 of NiH basic medical research is not the same as $1 R&D by a medical company, and especially not the same as $1 going into production. Spending $1 to produce a pill may save a life. $1 of NiH basic medical research may save a population.

We could but it’s a short sighted perspective. It’s like telling someone working on the steam engine to stop spending money because we could buy so many horses instead.

> at the moment, every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines

You are of course technically correct ("the best way to be correct"), but let's be honest: figuring out the optimal allocation of resources between solar/wind/geothermal and fusion research is unsolved problem. It's probably outright unsolvable.

It's also not a problem of one or the other. We will need both.

Remember that fusion research is not just about fusion. The materials technology advances are almost certainly going to show up elsewhere in various forms. To top it off, the nature of the technology itself requires that a non-trivial fraction of the funds are directed towards fundamental research. We can not know, or even guesstimate where those results end up being used outside of fusion research tracks.

I will not be surprised at all if/when some research done for advancing fusion will be used to improve solar and wind technologies.

> It may be wonderful if we could, but at the moment, every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines.

That's not how this works. The money that goes to research is very far removed from the money that goes towards utilities' capital investments. To say nothing of the politics involved.

Regardless, we stand to gain more than just a possible energy source from this research.

>“ It may be wonderful if we could, but at the moment, every dollar spent on fusion is a dollar not spent on building more solar panels and wind turbines.”

Every dollar spent on cars and transistors is a dollar not spent buying more horses and vacuum tubes

Every dollar we put into fusion could also go into all sorts of things that have nothing to do with renewable energy.

For government funding, the money could go to small fission reactors, some military project unrelated to energy, or just a reduction in the deficit.

For private investment, the sort of investors interested in fusion breakthroughs would probably go for other high-risk, high-reward opportunities rather than switching to a mature industry.

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