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by leephillips 1716 days ago
> there is definitely a few benefits to fusion.

Absolutely. But these benefits are vastly outweighed by one benefit shared by fission, solar cells, and wind turbines: those things are real.

3 comments

Thats the argument of coal plants for solar and at el sources of energy.

Not feasible, too expensive, doesnt work.

And yet here we are.

Fusion isn’t real yet - every technology you listed wasn’t real at some point relatively recently.
The problem with “not real yet” is that it applies equally to things that eventually became real, and to things that never came to pass. We once said the same about both fission power and flying cars, and yet I still drive on the ground to get my groceries.

There does seem to be some movement in fusion technology, but it has also been in the “soon” state for decades now. There is no obvious way to balance these two contending data points

The first fission reactor was in activity 10 000 years ago. Well, probably not even the first.

Wind power was exploited since the 11th century? Or is it 13th? I'm not that clear on that. Solar cell appeared somewhat late in the 19th century.

Fusion is real too, and older than all of those. The issue is the scale.

> The first fission reactor was in activity 10 000 years ago. Well, probably not even the first.

What are you referring to?

and man will never go to the moon...