[TaylorAlexander]

I believe we will build a functional net energy gain fusion reactor probably in the next decade if things go well (I’m rooting for SPARC), but we will still need to build an actual power plant (designed for long life, serviceability, improve efficiency based on what was learned before) and that will take a while. And then we need to build lots of them. And they will be very expensive.

Probably fusion power will not be cheaper than renewables inside of 50 years, because fusion power plants will simply be very expensive.

In the next 20 years we need to decarbonize as much as possible. Fusion sadly won’t have much of an impact for that.

But in 30 years when todays new renewables are at the end of their service life, we have an opportunity to replace them with fusion. That said, renewables will be that much cheaper in 30 years. I think for a while fusion will make the most sense for large industrial manufacturing operations that necessarily require large constant amounts of power.

[johnvanommen]

> (I’m rooting for SPARC)

Gives a whole new meaning to "Sun Microsystems"

[DanielHB]

Even if fusion was widely available and affordable you will still want other sources of power for peak demand. Like fission nuclear reactors, they will be good for base power-load. Fusion reactors won't be able to spin up and down based on demand willy nilly.

Given most demand is during the day and early evening solar is a good complement, but the more mixed renewals you have in your grid the better it will tolerate shocks in supply and demand.