After doing a lot of reading on fusion on the net, I keep running into a number: 50 years. I first found it as the estimate of time the team of people working on ITER estimated for a tokamak to become a fully operational energy-producing reactor. (That will help with global warming and the looming oil crisis.) Looking for a better answer, I went to Sandia National Laboratory hoping for a better answer about the Z-Pinch, but there was the same number, 50 years.
Why so long? I hate to get political, but these things aren’t just research projects, they are pretty vital for the worlds political stability, humanity’s economic viability, and the Earths ecological sustainability. This round 50-year target sounds like a safe number to tell political leaders who made their fortunes in oil that their future wealth will be safe from these projects. Is this number a real goal, or something that had to be said to keep the public funds from drying up?