[vjaswal]

I think this take is too skeptical to apply to all the startups. For all the talks from CFS I've seen, they've been very measured and sober about the viability of near-term fusion.

The game changer here is not very new reactor designs, but cheap high performance high-temperature superconductors that enable very high field and therefore much smaller size.

Other fusion work, like ICF or the LLNL laser fusion or Lockheed or General Fusion all seem to be built on designs that are far less understood and less Q performance so far.

[pfdietz]

The high-Tc superconductors are nice, but they are not a panacea. They move fusion from "absurdly" to just "desperately" uncompetitive.