Look. I understand why people are skeptical about the latest #fusion news from #Livermore. But it's too easy for skepticism to slide into cynicism, "fusion power has been twenty years away for sixty years" and all that. Don't gloss over the very real, steady progress researchers have made.
We know it's possible, and as long as we keep trying, someone will be the first to make it work.
@medigoth @TerryHancock I’m very bullish on commercial fusion, but extremely dubious that this approach, from a facility designed to do nuclear weapons modelling, will get us there. There are a ton of private companies working on far more practical approaches that can be more readily adapted to grid-connected power plants. Look at Helion, TAE, LPPFusion, General Fusion, First Light, etc. These are the folks who’ll make commercial fusion happen, not NIF.
@medigoth agreed. Besides, why wouldn’t we pursue this? What is the downside of investing resources into something as promising as fusion? I’m all for using wind and solar. Personally, I’m a big fan of plain-old fission. There are scientists trying to mimic photosynthesis. All of these are ways of solving our energy problems. There’s no good reason to undercut any of them while there are still really stupid ways of producing energy like coal, oil, and gas.
@medigoth I consider myself a skeptic on this subject, but the skepticism isn't about whether we'll *ever* get there, but rather about whether it'll happen in our lifetimes.
I trust human ingenuity will get there eventually, but I'm much less optimistic about it happening any time soon, even with this latest news.
@medigoth I only follow this vaguely, but it seems to me it looking more and more like we could build something to generate power, but there's an open question about whether it will make economic sense to do so given the cheapness of solar/wind+batteries.