[leephillips]

It is not worth investing money in, because it will never supply grid power: http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-e...

Here is another physicist warning about the hype just a few days ago: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclea...

[ip26]

It receives a pretty small level of funding, so I'm not quite sure there are many losses to cut.

$2.2bn over 5 years is about $1.50 per person per year. It's comparable to the funding for the CPB.

[leephillips]

It’s not much compared with some other budget items, you’re right. But a billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking about real money.

[simonh]

ITER will cost about the same as the Manhattan project, around $21bn in 2021 $, and that's just one project. Total investment in Fusion globally is huge and the problem is at the moment there are multiple different feasible ways forward, and it's not clear which will pan out. There's huge risk of wasting large amounts of resources and time, even if we do eventually figure it out.

[willis936]

Creating conditions to split a heavy nucleus for 1 microsecond is much easier to do than fusing light nuclei steady state.

[simonh]

Yes of course, I know that. I’m not even saying the investment in fusion is a bad idea. I’m just pointing out that actually our investment in it is enormous and very risky.