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Fusion Reactor Concept Could Be Cheaper Than Coal
vinces99 writes Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output. The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.
2034.
I'm not holding my breath -- fusion power has been 20-30 years away since the 70s.
In fairness, fusion power works just fine if you scale it up. It's just the attempts to make it work in systems that don't weight ~2x10^29kg or more that haven't been so hot.
It's that the energy output is less than the energy inputs.
They could fix this if they used Monster Cables.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
If it's off-world, we could use the radiation and some catalysts to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen, and ferment it under pressure and heat for a few million years until it's in an easy-to-use portable form.