The levelized cost of large scale solar power is about 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.
ITER alone will cost $21B minimum and won’t make power. DEMO will conservatively cost about the same, but let’s be generous and round up the total “fusion research cost” to just $30B.
That would buy about 1.5e18 joules, or around the same amount of energy as the electrical generation of the United States… for a month.
So, a drop in the bucket compared to what we use globally…
Even if you use much bigger numbers for fusion research and assume further solar power cost improvements, fusion might still be worth it.
However, it’ll only be worthwhile if the total cost the production fusion plants is not too high. If they end up costing $10B each then the whole thing will be a dead end economically.
ITER alone will cost $21B minimum and won’t make power. DEMO will conservatively cost about the same, but let’s be generous and round up the total “fusion research cost” to just $30B.
That would buy about 1.5e18 joules, or around the same amount of energy as the electrical generation of the United States… for a month.
So, a drop in the bucket compared to what we use globally…
Even if you use much bigger numbers for fusion research and assume further solar power cost improvements, fusion might still be worth it.
However, it’ll only be worthwhile if the total cost the production fusion plants is not too high. If they end up costing $10B each then the whole thing will be a dead end economically.