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
Eli5 response : “30 years away” is the response a give to my manager when it asks me “how long will it take to build this software?”. OK, not years in my case but days or months, you’ve got it. I have no clue so I give a time anyone can forsee.
For nuclear fusion it’s the response experts give to journalists for the sake of simplicity. Actually there are a lot of work to do and a lot of uncertainty to figure out before build a fully functional and scalable prototype and way more for a viable industrial facility.
30 years is about a generation of engineers. When you say “30 years away” you actually means “We are working hard on it so the next generation of engineers might be able to build it”.
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