[elfexec]

Fusion would be a national security level tech - like FTL travel or general AI. Heck, it would be beyond national security level. Nobody would share that without some geopolitical considerations.

To put it in perspective, the US is fighting china over relatively mundane nonsense like 5G, semiconductors, etc. Fusion would be many orders of magnitude more important than any tech we have today.

The US exploited the control of oil to conquer and rule over the entire world. Every nation on earth is a vassal on some level ( even china and russia ) to the US because we discovered and exploited oil first and pretty much ended up controlling most of it around the world. The international world order is an american world order because of oil. If madagascar or north korea discovered fusion, they would control the commanding heights and they wouldn't share such a secret without getting something in return. If that is the case for madagascar/north korea, major nations like china, japan, france, germany, russia, india, turkey, nigeria, brazil, venezuela, etc who don't want to be under american domination would be even more incentivized to keep it for themselves.

What is the value of limitless free and environmentally friendly energy? Priceless. It's the type of tech which alters human trajectory and the world order. Not only is fusion priceless in and of itself, it's priceless in terms of it's derivative effects. Discovery of fusion can lead to general AI and vice versa.

In other words, ain't nobody sharing fusion tech - at least not without significant strings attached.

[chiefalchemist]

Share or not, the optimist in me sees fusion as liberating in so many was. Unfortunately, the realist in me sees it as been massively disruptive.

As you noted, oil isn't a form of energy, it's a weapon. Take away the power of that weapon and there's not telling what would happen.

Best of times. Worst of time.

[zo1]

I'm a pessimist/realist when it comes to it as well. We as a global population are still figuratively learning to clean up our own feces, faffing about with useless programs and dragging dead-weight because we refuse to properly fix problems.

[pfdietz]

The pessimistic in you should see it as a massive boondoggle. For fundamental reasons, there's very little chance this, and likely other, fusion efforts will lead to a competitive source of energy.

[i_am_nomad]

Thank you. Every time I see a fusion article - and it’s always a breathless “just around the corner” puff piece - I scan it to see if they’ve solved neutron embrittlement, or even come close. So far, no one has.

[pfdietz]

Or volumetric power density, or simply the cost of the non-nuclear part of the power plant.

But of course no one has solved the neutron damage issue. How could they? To develop a material, if that's even possible, that could withstand 14 MeV neutrons well enough, one would need a fusion reactor to make those neutrons to test the materials (and tritium breeding to keep it running). This circular dependency would be very difficult to traverse.

[stjohnswarts]

"The US exploited the control of oil..." . Hogwash, Europe and Asia had the same resources when it comes to petroleum.

[elfexec]

Not hogwash. Just the truth. Go read the history of oil. The US was decades ahead of europe and europe never had the oil that the US did hence why major european powers like britain, france and germany relied heavily on coal. No european country had the oil fields of pennsylvania, ohio, texas, california, etc. That's why europe had to take oil from asia, africa etc. Standard Oil became the most valuable company and rockefeller the wealthiest man primarily by exploiting oil within our borders. Britain, france, etc had to steal oil from the middle east, etc. The dutch stole it from indonesia. So on and so forth. But as I said, they were decades behind the US in oil production and oil use.

If you are still unconvinced, go look up oil production before and during ww2. Before and during ww2, the US produced more oil than the rest of the world combined. And after ww2, with control over saudi/OPEC oil, venezuelan oil, canadian oil, etc, we controlled the world's oil supply.

The bountiful oil reserves within our borders and the early exploitation of it is why the US became the world's dominant power. Oil is why ww1 and ww2 was fought. Oil is why we won ww2. Oil is why we won the cold war. Oil is why the american international world order exists.

[friendlybus]

Oil limited the aggressors in ww2 and helped the US win. It was not why the war started. German logicians predicted the outcome of the western front before the fight started because of their limited resources. It was never possible to take russia. The war was commenced anyway.

[faissaloo]

There would be no need to share fusion energy, fusion energy would allow you to single handedly take over the world.

[pfdietz]

How would it do that?

[faissaloo]

It would massively speed up your production of just about anything including other fusion reactors

[pfdietz]

Given that fusion power would be much more expensive than other sources we already have, no, it wouldn't do anything of the sort.