[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.