Comment on Is the dream of nuclear fusion dead?
infinitevalence@discuss.online 5 weeks agoo yeah, I dont see ITER as a bad investment, just that the side goal of actually generating net energy is probably a pipe dream given its delays. We can create fusion, and we can create more fusion energy than what is put into the fuel, but we cant do all these things yet at the same time, and we cant do them without secondary devices requiring too much power.
ITER will help bring down the costs of manufacturing because its size requires building up supply lines, but it still probably wont be the first to get online.
keepthepace@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
ITER does not aim at being a power plant. Its heat is directed at cooling towers with no turbines. The first fusion power plant is supposed to be DEMO which is supposed to start producing electricity by 2050.
Fermion@feddit.nl 5 weeks ago
DEMO is not a singular reactor, but rather a class of reactors that are expected to be built using the technologies and lessons learned from ITER. So basically ITER’s main goal is to be a massive international R&D project to pave the the way for individual countries to be able to build their own DEMO plants afterwards. Pathfinding manufacturing technologies for this unique of a system is a big part of why ITER is so expensive. Replicating an ITER like machine should be considerably cheaper.