What if this fusion power thing actually pans out? The ITER is on track, and the scale model test in China earlier this year looked very promising. If we had access to (what from our perspective seems like) infinite clean energy what could we do with it? Transmute elements? Desalinize seawater? Drive a rotating magnetic field the size of the planet for wireless global electric power? What are the limits?
We're twenty years away from fusion, and we've been twenty years away from fusion for the last sixty years.
However, thorium fission reactors have already been proven to deliver a total net positive energy.
I’m sorry but that’s just not true.
ITER, the project @wrecker_vs_dracula is talking about, is a 500MW net positive fusion power plant being built in France.
It’s a massively multinational project that has cost it’s 35 member nations, including China, India, Russia, the US, the UK and the EU more than 20 billion USD so far. The member nations have agreed to fully share all IP and research resulting from the project.
It was initially proposed by Gorbachev in 1986, funded in 2006 and construction began in 2007. It’s scheduled to come online for the first time in December 2025.
Fusion was 20 years away 20 years ago.
Now it’s almost here.
When they say net positive, they are referring specifically to the plasma reaction (Q) and not the ability to extract energy. Total electrical output will be near 0. The tech is sadly still 20 year away.
Well how about that, glad I'm wrong!
Though in the short term, thorium rock salt still seems like the best rout for ending petroleum dependence.
In 2025 it's supposed to be just first plasma (not fusion). I think first fusion is scheduled for 2035
We have been 20 years away from fusion for 50 years because funding has stayed stagnant for 50 years