Everything is still either magnetic- or inertial confinement-based, right?
And within those there are the variety of designs.
I hate to say it, but a tiny part of me doesn't discount the possibility of energy majors subtley killing small-scale fusion approaches and pushing internation-scale huge projects (i.e. ones unlikely to be delivered quickly).
> Everything is still either magnetic- or inertial confinement-based, right?
Pretty much, but there are some that are kinda-sorta both (General Fusion's approach is "magneto-inertial"), and also a lot of variety within each bucket. Like, Zap Energy's approach is magnetic, but involves no external magnets, whereas developing the fancy magnets is a key operational challenge for CFS.
There's some interesting arguments in favor of the combination of magnetic and interial approaches. This is broadly known as 'magneto-inertial fusion', and there's a continuum of ideas between 'mostly inertial' and 'mostly magnetic'. I'd put Helion's approach far toward the magnetic side.
I mean, that's just a failure in the EOL decommissioning mechanism of large instances, in terms of making them bigger, there becomes a point where it becomes difficult (or even impossible) to add more fuel [1], but they don't violently explode until the decommissioning phase.
And within those there are the variety of designs.
I hate to say it, but a tiny part of me doesn't discount the possibility of energy majors subtley killing small-scale fusion approaches and pushing internation-scale huge projects (i.e. ones unlikely to be delivered quickly).