A nuclear fusion reactor in China, dubbed the "artificial sun," has broken its own record to bring humanity one step closer to near-limitless clean energy.
We can already massively increase generation to meet the needs of those industries whenever we want. They’re impractical due to the cost of meeting their energy requirements, not because it’s impossible.
Unless fusion power plants are going to be free to build or last forever, they have the same practical limit as every other type of generation - they have to be paid for. It isn’t clear that fusion would be a huge step forward in cost per megawatt-hour.
The main attraction of fusion is near limitless clean energy generation. The corollary of near limitless is that per unit price will be extremely low. The tech is inherently scalable to larger reactors, and that means if you’re going to be building a reactor anyway, it’s easy to combine it with nearby industrial development plans to take advantage of it.
We can already massively increase generation to meet the needs of those industries whenever we want. They’re impractical due to the cost of meeting their energy requirements, not because it’s impossible.
Unless fusion power plants are going to be free to build or last forever, they have the same practical limit as every other type of generation - they have to be paid for. It isn’t clear that fusion would be a huge step forward in cost per megawatt-hour.
The main attraction of fusion is near limitless clean energy generation. The corollary of near limitless is that per unit price will be extremely low. The tech is inherently scalable to larger reactors, and that means if you’re going to be building a reactor anyway, it’s easy to combine it with nearby industrial development plans to take advantage of it.
Bigger, more powerful fusion gear isn’t going to also be more expensive?
Lots of generation technologies scale, and costs fall as they do. That’s not something unique to fusion power.