yep, at least until we get aneutronic fusion going with direct schema of electricity generation bypassing the heat engines, the fusion on Earth has no chances of competing with the most of the existing and especially solar/wind energy sources. Other than that the 2 most interesting potential applications are weapons and space propulsion. Those applications are better served by inertial confinement (laser, Z-machine, fusor, DPF) which historically been showing better results and usually at much lower costs (and even the high cost NIF can be redone today using modern solid state which would lower the cost/size dramatically) yet historically the resources have been poured into the huge systems like Tokamak.
> yep, at least until we get aneutronic fusion going with direct schema of electricity generation bypassing the heat engines, the fusion on Earth has no chances of competing with the most of the existing and especially solar/wind energy sources.
This sounds like unfounded opinion to me. While I agree that ITER derived designs are unlikely to compete economically, that doesn't prevent alternative designs, especially hybrid fusion/fission sub-critical reactor's, from competing.
For those not familiar, here's the wikipedia page on hybrid fusion-fission [1]. The idea is to use a sub-break-even fusion reactor as a source of very high energy neutrons that would trigger fission in uranium or thorium isotopes that are otherwise non-fissile. For example U-238, which constitutes 99% of all uranium on earth, and which is currently the dead weight as far as uranium is concerned (worse, you spend a lot, a lot of money to separate U-235 from U-238). U-238 can undergo fission when targeted by fast neutrons, but can't sustain a chain-reaction, so fusion-fission hybrid reactors can't lead to a Chernobyl event (but a Fukushima is possible).
Not clear why we don't hear more about fusion-fission hybrids on HN. It sounds like such a promising technology.
