r/fusion • u/Sun_In_A_Bottle • 14d ago

Why fusion, over everything else?

$15.2 billion in private investment over the past 5 years!

For an industry that is projected to need 1 million workers by 2040, how is the global private workforce roughly ONLY 4,000?!

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u/OutrageousArea6136 13d ago

This isn't science, this is a religion for you guys. You believe it would work but it has never worked in practice. It's not about cost. There isn't enough lithium on this planet or any other feasible technology that would provide enough power for the world's major cities on a still night. Yes, you can pick a small town in Norway and wire it up for 24/7 renewable power but what to do with all the cities in China of 30 million people each? Factories, AI data centers, etc. You'd have to cover the whole planet with solar arrays and wind farms. Fusion power should be the top priority right now. Also, it's the only thing that may some day allow us to reach other solar systems.

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u/Sad_Dimension423 13d ago

Wow, what ridiculous projection.

Consider the sheer absurdity of the claim you're defending: no renewable energy sources, and no storage technologies (not just lithium batteries), known or yet to be developed, singly or in combination, can power the world. Your claim is a very strong one, and I would have expected you to have a general reason why it holds.

But you don't have that. You have feelings, you have an intuition, but you don't have a good argument that goes into the (large number of) details needed to defend your position.

Why did you make this argument? Simply because you don't want renewables to be able to power the world. Yours is a fundamentally dishonest and unintelligent position, one driven by wishful desperate thinking. For some reason you have an emotional commitment to renewables not working.

BTW, more lithium would be needed for vehicles than would be needed to level a renewable grid, and that lithium would be needed for BEVs even in a nuclear powered world. Also, have you seen that Na-ion batteries are now being shipped in GWh quantities? You need to show that those (and Fe-air, and Zn, and all other possible battery chemistries, and all batter storage technologies) won't work either.

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u/OutrageousArea6136 13d ago

Do you realize that the energy density of all currently known battery types is totally pathetic? Just look at these numbers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg I'm all for renewables, I just don't think that they will be enough unless most of the world seriously changes their lifestyle.

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u/Sad_Dimension423 13d ago

Ah energy density, the bullshit metric that has absolutely jack shit to do with powering the world.

Why do you clowns keep bleating out this nonsense? Can't you come up with an argument that's stronger than tissue paper?

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u/OutrageousArea6136 13d ago

Because we need energy at night and when there is no wind?