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radicalceleryjuice t1_j0cm5li wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Fusion energy breakthrough and national security implications explained by TheScienceAdvocate

Honestly, I’m open to any plan if the people planning are actually reading and capable of understanding the science coming out.

My concern about fusion is that people seem to misunderstand the recent breakthrough, and that they will support very unrealistic plans.

To me it looks like a mix of renewables, storage, and next-gen fission is a better plan. PV perovskites and agrivoltaics are super promising.

…but if fusion starts looking more feasible on a timeline that will result in scaled energy before the 2050s, we should ramp up funding. I think it would be crazy to drop perovskites though. Are you following that stuff? Have you looked into off-river pumped hydro for storage? The cheaper solar gets, the better the incentive for storage solutions.

Note: we’ve had some crazy heat waves and heat domes and massive wildfires in BC (over a million hectares burning in a single year). The way things are going, the whole region will burn before fusion makes a watt of net positive energy. If your plan includes reducing carbon emissions while we work on fusion, sure.

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[deleted] t1_j0cmw5n wrote

I mean I agree with the multi-prong approach anyway (generally I think the way things are going, we’ll be OK).

Storage developments are very cool, but they’re tricky to scale; scale-up on that stuff takes time. I’ve been rooting for ‘flow batteries’ for some time but they’ve been a bit slow.

I have maybe an opposing view on fusion. Agreed this particular announcement seems a little over-hyped, but I think many others were under hyped in the last 3-5 yrs. Things are really clicking together now. It’s HARD, but it’s the golden goose. I think the first commercial plant will be operating in less than 20, and I think it will scale aggressively, as it’s the golden goose.

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radicalceleryjuice t1_j0cpsfu wrote

Sounds reasonable. I’ll make a personal bet on perovskites but happy for a chunk of my taxes to go toward fusion. I hope you’re right about sooner rather than later!

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