I am somewhat skeptical of Hirsch’s recommendation. After all, it was a similar push by him to narrow the field back in the ’70s (plus unforeseen, if not unforeseeable, budget cuts) that got us the tokamak monopoly. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much good is being done by the DOE’s present overwhelming focus on tokamaks. At any rate, I think it’s a good thing the New York Times is hosting this argument, rather than only covering the latest developments related to ITER and/or NIF. Even if the DOE is unwilling or unable to expand its focus much, a wider audience is thereby made aware of other options.

The full EPRI paper mentioned by Hirsch (and of which he was a co-author), “Criteria for Practical Fusion Power Systems”, can be found here, along with other papers related to the economics of fusion reactors (mainly tokamaks and IEC).