Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

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> We don't know this.

Except we do know this because people built similar systems at similar scales and temperatures before.

> All of them received significant investment

Not compared to Nuclear, Fossil Fuel, or PV R&D + subsidies. For scale in the US alone “From FY 2016 to FY 2022, federal subsidies for renewable energy totaled $183.3 billion” That’s more than 1 ITER per year, and splitting that budget across multiple countries and 2 decades is a very different proposition. Especially as there was ITER funding in this time period so the delta is less than the full cost of the project.

Further look at the timeline, I’m suggesting the project should have finished long before PV became cheap.

> Except we do know this because people built similar systems at similar scales and temperatures before.

Did we? Where are those fusion plants installed?

> Not compared to Nuclear, Fossil Fuel, or PV R&D + subsidies

You are probably referring to this document: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pd... . A huge share of the $183.3 billion are tax expenditures, which is to say they reduce taxes on activities related with energy (e.g. nuclear decommissioning is tax free). That is not the same as throwing money at those technologies R&D, but it counts as subsides because they can operate more cheaply. Only $11 billion of the $183.3 is true expending. But they mix R&D with other direct expending, like guaranteed loans. In Figure 11 we can see that R&D for all renewable energies is less than $300 million.

Fusion energy don't want tax expenditures, they want cash and lots of it.

> Did we? Where are those fusion plants installed?

Oxfordshire etc but most of the cost is stuff you’d see at any nuclear power plant.

> Only $11 billion of the $183.3 is true expending

That’s not how money works, there’s zero difference between a tax break and handing out money because money is fungible. The IRS will write you a check on a “tax” break.

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