[PhantomGremlin]

We had a similar one yesterday: "Cancer treatment breakthrough".

@dang wound up changing that one to a different article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342527

The thing about batteries and about cancer treatments is that there has been very meaningful progress over the years.

In contrast, the fusion timetable seems to be getting worse. Now ITER is projected for "full fusion in 2035". So it's actually more than 10 years away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

[Sniffnoy]

I mean, that's ITER. If fusion is ready soon it'll likely be via ARC. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is aiming for SPARC (demonstration reactor) in 2025, ARC (commercial reactor!) in 2030.

That's obviously an, um, ambitious goal, and we'll see whether that actually happens; but it's not like ITER is the only possibility. Which is good because even once ITER is turned on, it's hard to see the that direction ever producing anything commercially viable...

[AtlasBarfed]

5 years to construct a commercial fusion reactor after the demonstration? And it's nuclear, even if there isn't nasty fission products, there's still neutron degradation that needs to be shielded.

Again, I'd be happy if cheap fusion appeared, but it doesn't have a good track record.

[Sniffnoy]

Well, sure, like I said, it's ambitious; there's no guarantee this is going to actually work. But it's not like the people working on it haven't thought about the problem. They have an interesting approach to the neutron degradation problem, using a liquid blanket that can be circulated, so you don't have to deal with the problem of replacing solid shielding after it becomes too degraded.

[Retric]

I remember when fusion was 50 years away, then 40 etc. It’s not dropping 1:1 but lower numbers do presumably represent progress.

That said, even if it worked it’s unlikely to be cost competitive due to the dramatic price reduction in wind, solar, and batteries.

PS: ITER’s first plasma is scheduled for 2025, but I think their holding off on DT fusion even if technically it could work on day 1. Which largely comes down to funding, they don’t have anything in the construction pipeline in case there is issues with ITER’s design so they want to be able to modify it after testing without concern for radiation.