It's kind of unfortunate that the label "nuclear power" seems to inevitably bundle both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion into the same public policy debate. Their respective safety profiles couldn't be further apart.
While the economic risks for a failed nuclear fusion strategy can be argued, given even a modest chance for eventually producing large amounts of clean and safe energy output 24/7, should we not be pursuing fusion more aggressively?
Last year I met a doctor that work at the experimental ITER fusion plant. He was pretty optimistic about the technology but totally desperate about budget.
It's an international initiative and US are actually one of the country that pay the least compared to its Income per capita...
By today funding it's clear that real solutions won't be ready until 2050, hence fission is still required in the mix until then. I don't get how people can blinding defend that renewable alone is the answer, because once you do the math it just don't work.
From a few weeks ago on HN, I watched this video[1] that made me much more optimistic about fusion. The bottom line is that the ITAR direction is misguided since superconducting technology has come so far in recent years.
Although considered somewhat non-traditional, aneutronic fusion[1] approaches may have interesting possibilities on significantly smaller budgets than ITER
While the economic risks for a failed nuclear fusion strategy can be argued, given even a modest chance for eventually producing large amounts of clean and safe energy output 24/7, should we not be pursuing fusion more aggressively?