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by marssaxman 479 days ago
That all sounds reasonable. Sometimes the economic problems are harder to solve than the technical ones, though, and that's what interests me about this proposal. I have had a bearish outlook on fusion power in recent years, because utility-scale grid power is the most competitive market there is, and the cost of solar & batteries have been dropping so fast that it's not clear there would be any economic justification for a fusion power plant even if we knew how to build one. An intermediate market, willing to pay much more money for far less power, where renewables cannot compete, seems like it might be just the thing fusion needs to transition out of research and into practical use - even if it does take more engineering to cope with the rigors of the sea.