[tsimionescu]

Nothing except the costs, but then it's not a single reactor anymore and other power plants scale as or more easily. So nothing is really special about fusion power if we just want to scale horizontally.

[leereeves]

I thought fusion is special because the inputs are more abundant and the outputs less toxic than other fuel power plants.

[tsimionescu]

Fusion can be compared like this:

- vs fossil fuels, almost limitless fuel with no greenhouse gas emissions

- vs nuclear fission, more fuel compared to current designs (though breeder reactors could essentially use any piece of rock as fuel), and shorter lived but even more toxic outputs (at least for D-T fusion, all pieces of the reactor become highly radioactive materials after 10-20 years)

- vs renewables, it has the advantage of being decoupled from weather and day/night patterns, but it is more expensive, it requires fuel, and it produces much more toxic outputs