Reply To: The North Atlantic Current

[Tulse]

Phil’s Dad wrote: In the end though it comes down to bang for buck. How much net electricity per dollar (including capital payback, fuel sourcing and processing, decommissioning costs, waste disposal, security costs, tea, coffee and so on over the expected lifetime of the machine). Let’s call it $Q.

And the thing I find hugely exciting about FF is that it’s perhaps the only fusion technique that even offers a ballpark estimate of this — with tokamaks and ICF, who the hell knows how expensive the actual physical plant will be, or how much it will cost to decommission the radioactive gear? Big Fusion is so far away from engineering an actual plant that we don’t have a clue whether it will be economical, even if it reaches theoretical breakeven. By contrast, it’s very clear that if FF actually produces fusion, it will be extremely cheap to engineer it to start pumping out electricity.