[bitcurious]

Wind and solar have a max theoretical output that is constrained by physical space and competition for its use, in addition to weather patterns, etc.

Fusion energy has a theoretical max that’s orders of magnitude higher.

Wind+solar is the path to decarbonization and sustaining our current world.

Fusion is the path to post scarcity. If/when we get scalable commercial fusion, it’ll be like the transition to oil - society will radically change, in ways we can’t predict.

[vlovich123]

> Fusion is the path to post scarcity. If/when we get scalable commercial fusion, it’ll be like the transition to oil - society will radically change, in ways we can’t predict.

Except this is also true for fission. So if fission has failed to transform society, why do you think fusion will?

[pertymcpert]

Uh because building fission reactors, despite being fairly safe, is still a risk compared to fusion? We don’t want to put fission reactors in every town, but we could one day with commercial fusion. And the sheer amount of energy we could harness would allow us to do insane things.

[vlovich123]

> despite being fairly safe, is still a risk compared to fusion

I recommend you read up on the Gen IV reactor designs. They’re totally safe - meltdowns are impossible because of the way the reactor is built. If anything catastrophic happens, the reaction stops and can never get to a runaway reaction (physically impossible). Look up Gen 4 reactors. Those will be available before fusion even gets off the ground (and I’ll note that fusion has 0 reactors built so who knows what kind of safety issues actually come up when engineering theory hits the road).

Even Gen III reactors are fine to put up everywhere (20x margin over Gen II) and Gen III+ reactors continue with the theme of adding passive safety measures that would prevent accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl. Critics who rate any possibility of accident as unacceptable will never be pleased but that’s not a reasonable position to take because nuclear energy isn’t built in a vacuum and global warming and existing coal power poses a significantly higher threat and renewables and batteries simply can’t scale no matter how hard we believe.

Fukushima and Chernobyl were Gen II designs which do have a cost advantage and EVEN WITH THOSE ACCIDENTS those designs are safer than existing coal and LNG power plants we are fine with having all over the place (nuclear is slightly safer than wind). Even Gen II designs built today are a fair bit safer than Chernobyl and Fukushima. Fukushima also ignored many and repeated safety warnings from internal and external reports although critics will generally point to this as a general criticism against all reactors (even though Fukushima still failed comparatively harmlessly all things considered).

Even with all of that, the death rate per kWH generated is drastically safer than coal and on par with wind and solar. Also construction costs tend to go down when the regulatory environment doesn’t inhibit building reactors due to political fears that aren’t grounded in the actual engineering.

I’ll also note that China is building many many nuclear reactors and Russia is also following suit. So from a competition/national security perspective, China and Russia both have access to significantly more clean energy and more energy independence than we do.

Look. I understand there are problems with fission reactors. They remain the only feasible way to generate nuclear power in the next 60-100 years at scale. Yes there are downsides and risks. However there’s one big upside vs fusion: it exists. It’s possible to build these plants now without physics and engineering breakthroughs we haven’t made yet. The advantages of fusion are safety, nuclear waste management, theoretical proliferation concerns. There’s no reason to believe construction costs will be significantly lower. Even if they are, we’re not even close to the first real commercial power plant even with this achievement as impressive as it is from a progress perspective.

[pertymcpert]

I answered why fusion would change the work in ways different to how fission changed the world.

> Look. I understand there are problems with fission reactors. They remain the only feasible way to generate nuclear power in the next 60-100 years at scale. Yes there are downsides and risks. However there’s one big upside vs fusion: it exists.

If you re-read the original comment, it supposed that fusion exists. You can't criticize something in development for not existing and use that as a point against why it won't be beneficial. That's circular reasoning.

> The advantages of fusion are safety, nuclear waste management, theoretical proliferation concerns.

Yeah, just nuclear waste management. No big deal.

> They remain the only feasible way to generate nuclear power in the next 60-100 years at scale.

You absolutely cannot predict with that level of certainty over 100 year time scales. You severely underestimate how much we can achieve over timescales as long as that.