Billionaires Are Chasing The Holy Grail of Energy: Fusion (bloombergquint.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Zorro shared this article from Bloomberg: Not long before he died, tech visionary Paul Allen traveled to the south of France for a personal tour of a 35-country quest to replicate the workings of the Sun. The goal is to one day produce clean, almost limitless energy by fusing atoms together rather than splitting them apart. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder said he wanted to view the early stages of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in Cadarache firsthand, to witness preparations "for the birth of a star on Earth." Allen wasn't just a bystander in the hunt for the holy grail of nuclear power. He was among a growing number of ultra-rich clean-energy advocates pouring money into startups that are rushing to produce the first commercially viable fusion reactor long before the $23 billion ITER program's mid-century forecast. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Peter Thiel are just three of the billionaires chasing what the late physicist Stephen Hawking called humankind's most promising technology.

Scientists have long known that fusion has the potential to revolutionize the energy industry, but development costs have been too high for all but a handful of governments and investors. Recent advances in exotic materials, 3D printing, machine learning and data processing are all changing that. "It's the SpaceX moment for fusion," said Christofer Mowry, who runs the Bezos-backed General Fusion Inc. near Vancouver, Canada. He was referring to Elon Musk's reusable-rocket maker. "If you care about climate change you have to care about the timescale and not just the ultimate solution. Governments aren't working with the urgency needed."

The company Allen supported, TAE Technologies, stood alone when it was incorporated as Tri-Alpha Energy two decades ago. Now it has at least two dozen rivals, many funded by investors with a track record of disruption. As a result, there's been an explosion of discoveries that are driving the kind of competition needed for a transformational breakthrough, according to Mowry.
The article reports one fusion company founded last year by six MIT professors is "confident they'll be able to produce a prototype of a so-called net energy reactor by 2025."

Comments

This has been going on for quite a while...

[mkoenecke]

I lived in a grad student dorm at the University of Texas for my first two years in law school. The first year a grad student in physics gave a talk about the viability of nuclear fusion energy production. He said that about thirty years before then people optimistically predicted that it would be dominating energy production thirty years from then, but that the science had advanced fairly dramatically, and he thought within another thirty years or so we really would see it. By the way, that was in 1981. We have been hearing this about nuclear fusion since the 1950s. But *this* time it's different!

Re:This has been going on for quite a while...

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in a grad student dorm at the University of Texas for my first two years in law school.
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We have been hearing this about nuclear fusion since the 1950s. But *this* time it's different!

And this is exactly why we need more science and engineers in government, and less lawyers. You lawyers think real things like Fusion energy that actually can, and eventually will revolutionize the world are just lies and pipe dreams, and a giant boondoggle made up by the Physicists. It isn't.

The reality is that if you say its 30 years away, what that _really_ means is that it's possible, it seems within reach during a human lifetime, but there's enough unknowns and difficulties that I can't really give you a good estimate about how long it might take.

This is a HARD problem. People were screwing around with electricity in a scientific way since 1600. Things got a bit more serious in the 1800s with the publication of Maxwell's equations. It took until the early 20th Century and inventions by Tesla and others to fully bring about our modern electric era. I don't think anyone would want to go back and tell James Clerk Maxwell or William Gilbert that what they did wasn't worthy of study since they didn't know when practical value might be made of it.

But I'm sure there were people like yourself who laughed at the people toying with this little "electricity thing" 200 years ago. 200 years later, we've changed who we're laughing at.

Re:This has been going on for quite a while...

[currently_awake]

Current designs of fusion reactors require expensive parts, meaning expensive power when it's eventually made to work. Solar power is cheap and readily available now, meaning it's what people will invest in. By the time they get fusion working there will be no compelling reason to use it (on Earth).

Re:This has been going on for quite a while...

[angel'o'sphere]

Need a better university system to make sure staff are hired on merit with skills?
Where and how do you acquire the skills regarding fusion, if not starting as an unskilled grad student in the not working fusion research reactors?

Oh, I should probably add

[rsilvergun]

it's fine if they want to spend money on the research. I'm all for it. I just don't want to rely on them for major breakthroughs, which with the last 40 years of nonstop tax and science funding cuts seems to be what we're doing.

We already have a huge fusion reactor...

[ffkom]

... which operates for free, and at a safe distance. It provides way more energy than mankind requires. All we need to do is collect it, and we are getting increasingly good at that.

Problem already solved

[manu0601]

We already know how to harness power from fusion. The technique is called "solar panel".

Re:Good but

[blindseer]

So what you're saying is that we need to make the solar to fuel conversion more efficient?

Sure, let's go with that. How long will it take to make that technology work as compared to, and I'm just giving this as an example, building some nuclear power plants to replace some natural gas power plants. We'd be burning less natural gas, and the gas we save would not have to be synthesized by some not yet proven viable technology. We'd still be burning some natural gas, but then we'd also be burning natural gas while waiting for this solar to fuel conversion technology to develop.

I keep hearing that nuclear power is worthless because it would take 10 years to complete a nuclear power plant if we started today. That's bullshit but I will concede that point for this discussion. I'll ask again, how long will it take for this solar to fuel technology to come? How long until we will see the energy storage systems of any type to get deployed and allow us to use wind and solar to replace coal? I keep hearing that it could take 10 to 20 years.

So, we can wait for wind and solar but not wait for nuclear? What a pile of bullshit. What happens if this technology doesn't come? Where is the plan B in this? Do we then allow nuclear power plants to get built? Or, can we wait another 10 to 20 years while we keep burning coal and natural gas?

We will need fuel synthesis infrastructure whether we deploy more nuclear or not. The difference is we can pray at the altars of wind and solar in the hope they will save us, or we can include nuclear power in on the deal just in case the gods don't smile upon us.