It seems that for the last couple decades fusion is always 30 years away and by this point we’ve well passed the initial 30 and seemingly little progress has been made.
Is it just that it’s so difficult to make efficient?
Has the technology improved substantially and we just don’t hear about it often?
In: Physics
Mostly cause we never invested as much as was needed to get it faster. The “30 years for fusion” came originally from a report in 1979. What that report did was state various “path to fusion”, which included various investment requirements. Like “high effort, medium effort, low effort”. People were like “oh look, we’ll have fusion soon”, but the thing is: That report also included a “fusion never” investment path. And guess how much we’ve invested over the years? Correct.
Fusion research is a classic case of “people want results, but they don’t want to invest for results”.
(*Really* early fusion research was also over-optimistic, mostly based on: We made a nuke in 45, we had nuclear reactors a few years later. Now we have fusion weapons, how hard can it be to make fusion reactors? Turns out: Pretty hard)
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