199
US firm validates 1.1-GW nuclear fusion plant design to deliver 400 MW electricity
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Technology
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Extremely complex and expensive engineering and technology development for 400 MW of net electricity generation. Why not just build a 400 MW solar farm (with battery shortage, of course)? There's a massive, natural fusion reactor in the sky blasting the Earth with petawatts of energy every day, for absolutely free.
Because you can't stably power a grid on solar. You need to buffer with a source of energy not dependent on environment.
That said, fusion (and fission as well) isn't really a great buffer because you don't really want to be switching it on and off. It's so expensive that it's only really economical to run it constantly 24/7. So while fusion could be an awesome and perfectly consistent base load, it doesn't solve the energy variability problems.
Ultimately utilizing renewables just requires some amount of energy storage and/or quick to activate gas generators.
This is like asking “why do R&D to invent solar panels when gas has always been 25¢/gallon?”
Technological progress isn’t free.
I'm just not convinced progress scales 1:1 with increasing technological complexity. In fact, I think progress might be better achieved by lowering costs and complexity, rather than increasing them. Maybe more isn't always better.
It's funny you should mention scaling, because fusion does not scale like that at all, it scales much better. If you can get a small reactor to work at all, a larger reactor designed with the same principles is significantly more efficient. With fusion, bigger is better.
I do hear what you're saying though. Sometimes there are just simpler solutions. And I actually think you're right, in most use cases solar + batteries is a better solution than a fusion plant. That said, solar + batteries has only become truly economical within the last 5-10 years. At this point there's really nothing "Simple" about photovoltaic or battery technology, lifetimes of study have gone into them. And 25 years ago, solar was cute, it was pie in the sky. And you'd hear these same arguments "shouldn't we be focusing efforts on something we already know works?"
The amount of electricity we will be able to extract from nuclear fusion, while using an extremely small amount of fuel, means that solar panels may cease to be practical in the first place.
Fusion still has a massive up front cost that needs to be recouped for decades.
So you’re saying solar panels were a mistake and we should have stuck to horses?
I should clarify. I think increasing technological complexity can lead to progress, but I don't think it always does. I think progress from increasing technological complexity often follows an s-curve. I'm not denying the progress that has come from the significant technological advancement of the last few centuries, I'm just not sure continued technological advancement will lead to that same level of progress over the next few centuries.
Maybe, but many things are increasingly efficient. Maybe energy need for most things is plateauing and flat id goud enough. You’ll just need fusion for datacenters
Because this is how research works and if we manage to get fusion power generation working well, we’ll have practically limitless clean energy available.
Thats what musk masturbates to...
Elon Musk doesn't give a fuck about the environment.
If musk gets off on limitless clean energy that's actually okay.
Oh the energy isn't for public usage but for clean AI. Pleps have to pay for the energy that can't be used to this end.
still better than AI powered from natural gas.