> but building ITER 20 years ago wouldn’t have been a particularly significant investment.
We don't know this. There are a number of investments that fail and the investors need to let go or you get into the phallacy of sunken costs. E.g. wave energy was a failure, thermo-solar under delivered, algae based fuels never scaled up, and ethanol fuels from waste proved very difficult to engineer, syngas was a ecological nightmare... All of them received significant investment, and they were abandoned, pivoted or relegated to niche applications. I personally would throw fusion in that same group of failed investments.
Luckily for us, solar PV (paired with batteries) is a huge win that justifies all the above failures: for decades it was a dream for the 25th century, but some people make it true in the 21st.
Not every spending/investment ends up in success! Fusion is one hurdle after another, yet it advocates still believe that is just a throw-more-money-at-it problem. I am not so convinced. Of all the failed (for now) energy sources, fusion is the biggest money sink. France spent 25 billion, plus 7 billion in private funds. It is not like they are working with peanuts, at those quantities you have to show some serious results, maybe facing scaling problems rather than basic development problems (e.g. ethanol failed at scaling, when it already proved viable on smaller scale. Fusion is not even in "we have this toy reactor that works we are fighting to scale" phase).
We don't know this. There are a number of investments that fail and the investors need to let go or you get into the phallacy of sunken costs. E.g. wave energy was a failure, thermo-solar under delivered, algae based fuels never scaled up, and ethanol fuels from waste proved very difficult to engineer, syngas was a ecological nightmare... All of them received significant investment, and they were abandoned, pivoted or relegated to niche applications. I personally would throw fusion in that same group of failed investments.
Luckily for us, solar PV (paired with batteries) is a huge win that justifies all the above failures: for decades it was a dream for the 25th century, but some people make it true in the 21st.
Not every spending/investment ends up in success! Fusion is one hurdle after another, yet it advocates still believe that is just a throw-more-money-at-it problem. I am not so convinced. Of all the failed (for now) energy sources, fusion is the biggest money sink. France spent 25 billion, plus 7 billion in private funds. It is not like they are working with peanuts, at those quantities you have to show some serious results, maybe facing scaling problems rather than basic development problems (e.g. ethanol failed at scaling, when it already proved viable on smaller scale. Fusion is not even in "we have this toy reactor that works we are fighting to scale" phase).