this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Being first to sustainable fusion is not the sole requirement for success. Simply contributing to the field is a significant benefit in the long-run.
A big, high budget project like this can try different approaches, where even failures can teach us useful information for future projects that may have no association with this one.
o 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.
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.
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.
Although I personally wouldn't be suprised if commwealth fusion systems SPARC/ARC leapfrogs ITER/DEMO. Unlike a lot of fusion startups, their approach isn't particularly novel, which means there shouldn't be major physics surprises. The higher field intensity afforded by REBCO should mean much smaller and cheaper machines.