The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity's future energy needs.
Max Planck plans on building an actual power plant in the 2030s. A stellerator (just like Wendelstein 7X) which, unlike Tokmaks, don’t have scaling issues. They will still need to nail down tritium breeding (ITER not getting anywhere, it should have provided that data) and there’s also some headaches about divertor panels which get (deliberately) hit by plasma and wear down quite a bit quicker than they would’ve hoped but a failure there would only get into the way of being price-competetive with other energy sources (lots of spare parts needed), not achieving net power output. Including cooling and everything, not just plasma heating.
As to it solving the climate crisis: Certainly not on its own, but possibly on the tail end of the transition. We don’t only need to fix the climate issue but also switch to a circular economy and having plenty of cheap energy makes that way, way easier to achieve.
Max Planck plans on building an actual power plant in the 2030s. A stellerator (just like Wendelstein 7X) which, unlike Tokmaks, don’t have scaling issues. They will still need to nail down tritium breeding (ITER not getting anywhere, it should have provided that data) and there’s also some headaches about divertor panels which get (deliberately) hit by plasma and wear down quite a bit quicker than they would’ve hoped but a failure there would only get into the way of being price-competetive with other energy sources (lots of spare parts needed), not achieving net power output. Including cooling and everything, not just plasma heating.
As to it solving the climate crisis: Certainly not on its own, but possibly on the tail end of the transition. We don’t only need to fix the climate issue but also switch to a circular economy and having plenty of cheap energy makes that way, way easier to achieve.