Environment & Energy

hatrack

(62,965 posts) Tue Jun 24, 2025, 08:23 AM Jun 24

Q: "Why Is Big Tech Investing Billions In Fusion?" A: Because They Like Burning Money On Shiny Bullshit Like AI

EDIT

The reactor under construction here at Commonwealth Fusion Systems is one of at least 43 private-industry ventures or partnerships in the United States and allied countries that are racing to commercialize fusion power. It’s a prize that has eluded scientists for so long, many still believe it can’t be done, at least not anytime soon.

But tech companies and investors are pouring billions into these companies, encouraged by breakthroughs they contend have placed a sustained fusion reaction tantalizingly within reach. China also factors into their urgency, with a government-sponsored effort there that is putting the West at risk of losing the global competition.

Scientists dreaming of fusion are no longer toiling in the shadows. They are being courted by governors, billionaires and tech behemoths eager to get in on the ground floor of what they see as a transformative, carbon-free fusion economy. “A lot of people thought we were chasing ghosts,” said Michl Binderbauer, at TAE Technologies, which has partnered with Google to build a fusion reactor in Southern California and is one of Commonwealth’s top rivals. Now more than $8 billion in mostly private money has been invested in fusion start-ups, most of it in the past four years.

Ed. - Setting all else aside, I should note that $8 billion isn't very much money in the energy industry. Costs for the Vogtle plant (which actually does generate electricity) alone stand at about $35 billion and it's only half-completed. CORRECTED by Progee - 3 and 4 were the final units.

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The current and former Energy Department secretaries are boosting its promise. “Fusion has hit that tipping point where things are going to happen fast,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a student of fusion decades ago at MIT who ultimately became an oil and gas CEO, said at a conference in Washington this month. While Trump officials have scaled back support for wind and solar energy, Wright has touted fusion because if harnessed, it would produce power without regard to weather or time of day.

Ed. - Emphasis added. Oh, yeah, and whatever, Sec. Fracking PR Dude.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/06/23/fusion-energy-climate-science/

Freebie: https://wapo.st/4nyyNDN

8 replies

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Highlight:

Q: "Why Is Big Tech Investing Billions In Fusion?" A: Because They Like Burning Money On Shiny Bullshit Like AI (Original Post) hatrack Jun 24 OP

Yeah, because research is the devil's workshop and we all know how corporations just love to steal our money ... marble falls Jun 24 #1

A: This is corporate money, not ours; B: Meitner et. al. proved fission after about 25 years of basic research hatrack Jun 24 #4

Good time for a reality check post from NNadir... dgauss Jun 24 #2

Send out the signal!!!! marble falls Jun 24 #7

"the Vogtle plant ... it's only half-completed" - huh? progree Jun 24 #3

Probably a big assumption on my part - where 3 and 4 are, there must be 1 and 2 . . . hatrack Jun 24 #5

Units 1 and 2 were completed in 1987 and 1989 progree Jun 24 #6

Slowly, light spread across the landscape, making reality visible . . . hatrack Jun 24 #8

marble falls

(66,989 posts)

1. Yeah, because research is the devil's workshop and we all know how corporations just love to steal our money ...

Reply to hatrack (Original post)

Tue Jun 24, 2025, 08:35 AM

Jun 24

... put it into big bonfires. How many years did it take to split atoms? At the first atomic bomb tests, there were concerns that a detonation would set off an unstopable chain reaction and cause the planet to go up like a split atom, like this:

?si=7PVn6rmwSBs9rn89

Or that there was no way to mechanically effect atoms.

hatrack

(62,965 posts)

4. A: This is corporate money, not ours; B: Meitner et. al. proved fission after about 25 years of basic research

Reply to marble falls (Reply #1)

Tue Jun 24, 2025, 09:23 AM

Jun 24

C. They did so in 1938 using an apparatus that fit onto a laboratory tabletop at minimal cost.

D. Chicago 1 went critical about four years later, in the process generating 0.5 watts before Fermi shut down the reactor.

E. Hanford B - a full-scale plutonium production reactor - went critical less than two years later, in September 1944.

F. We launched the Nautilus in 1954, the same year that the USSR generated grid power from a nuclear reactor for the first time.

So, sixteen years between proving and reproducing the physical process and the deployment of working technologies based on that process to generate power to run ships and power the grid.

Meanwhile, scientists and engineers have been working on fusion since the 1950s, and while we know far more than we did back then, there is no proof that this is going to work, or that any net energy produced is going to be affordable to anyone other than the richest of the rich. And as the climate horizon closes, I have little confidence that we're going to have 20 or 35 or 50 years to perfect the technology, much less "win a race" with China or whoever.

As noted in the article, it's like coming up with a viable concept for an internal combustion engine in a world where metals have yet to be invented - and that's coming from a fusion supporter.