The reason fusion is always 30 years away is because that statement is always accompanied with the subtext of 30 years at the current funding rate. Funding consistently decreased for decades as optimism in the tech fades.

However, this decade will be marked with a number of breakthroughs. Last year we achieved the first net energy gain from fusion ever, there are a number of fairly well funded startups with very promising tech, and ITER will be the closest we have ever gotten to a real working fusion plant with (hopefully) large scale net energy

Now is precisely the right the time to increase funding to fusion to push us over the hump into usable power production

[–] thedeadwalking4242 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It still cost billions on billions to build these prototypes. The working reactors will be the same way. We need cheap easy to access energy now not later. The earth is dying and will continue too if we don't take immediate action. Build the nuclear plants now keep researching fusion. But we cannot really that a working model will be available to us in the near future

[–] nBodyProblem 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

… what do you think the green energy sector is doing?

There is orders of magnitude more funding being sunk into rolling out existing green energy tech than in researching fusion. This money isn’t going towards fission reactors because they aren’t economically viable when compared to other forms of green energy like wind and solar.

[–] thedeadwalking4242 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For base load it is

[–] nBodyProblem 0 points 1 year ago

Energy storage of solar is promising to be cheaper than nuclear

Nuclear powerplants are very, very expensive when you amortize the commissioning and decommissioning costs into the lifetime expenses. There have been repeated attempts to encourage fission adoption over the last 20 years and almost no new plants are being made because the economics just don’t work.