A "fast track" plan to a commercial fusion power plant has been sketched out.[10] This scenario, which assumes that ITER continues to demonstrate that the tokamak line of magnetic confinement is the most promising for power generation, anticipates a full-scale power plant coming on-line in 2050, potentially leading to a large-scale adoption of fusion power over the following thirty years.

Economics

It is far from clear whether nuclear fusion will be economically competitive with other forms of power. The many estimates that have been made of the cost of fusion power cover a wide range, and indirect costs of and subsidies for fusion power and its alternatives make any cost comparison difficult. The low estimates for fusion appear to be competitive with but not drastically lower than other alternatives. The high estimates are several times higher than alternatives.[citation needed]

While fusion power is still in early stages of development, substantial sums have been and continue to be invested in research. In the EU almost € 10 billion was spent on fusion research up to the end of the 1990s, and the new ITER reactor alone is budgeted at € 10 billion. It is estimated that up to the point of possible implementation of electricity generation by nuclear fusion, R&D will need further promotion totalling around € 60-80 billion over a period of 50 years or so (of which € 20-30 billion within the EU).[10] Nuclear fusion research receives € 750 million (excluding ITER funding), compared with € 810 million for all non-nuclear energy research combined [11], putting research into fusion power well ahead of that of any single rivaling technology.

Advantages

Fusion power would provide much more energy for a given weight of fuel than any technology currently in use,[12] and the fuel itself (primarily deuterium) exists abundantly in the Earth's ocean: about 1 in 6500 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium.[13] Although this may seem a low proportion (about 0.015%), because nuclear fusion reactions are so much more energetic than chemical combustion and seawater is easier to access and more plentiful than fossil fuels, some experts estimate that fusion could supply the world's energy needs for millions of years.[14][15]

An important aspect of fusion energy in contrast to many other energy sources is that the cost of production is inelastic. The cost of wind energy, for example, goes up as the optimal locations are developed first, while further generators must be sited in less ideal conditions. With fusion energy, the production cost will not increase much, even if large numbers of plants are built. It has been suggested that even 100 times the current energy consumption of the world is possible.

Some problems which are expected to be an issue in this century such as fresh water shortages can actually be regarded merely as problems of energy supply. For example, in desalination plants, seawater can be purified through distillation or reverse osmosis. However, these processes are energy intensive. Even if the first fusion plants are not competitive with alternative sources, fusion could still become competitive if large scale desalination requires more power than the alternatives are able to provide.

Despite being technically non-renewable, fusion power has many of the benefits of long-term renewable energy sources (such as being a sustainable energy supply compared to presently-utilized sources and emitting no greenhouse gases) as well as some of the benefits of such much more limited energy sources as hydrocarbons and nuclear fission (without reprocessing). Like these currently dominant energy sources, fusion could provide very high power-generation density and uninterrupted power delivery (due to the fact that it is not dependent on the weather, unlike wind and solar power).

Would the energy generated primarily be thermal, or would you also have charged particles that could be used for electrical purposes? Would this be akin to fission power plants, just with a different heat source for a steam turbine?

So the french don't have a monopoly on the technology, they are just the only ones to bother doing so?

In fact, there's really no such thing as "nuclear waste": a nuclear reactor is refueled by its waste. In other words, almost all "waste" can be recycled. Indeed, ninety-five percent of a spent nuclear fuel rod is natural uranium, and so it can be put right back in the ground, just as it was found.

The radioactive part constitutes only about five percent, but of that, half is uranium and plutonium, and so it can be recycled as fuel — specifically mixed-oxide fuel, which is exactly what the French have been doing for twenty-five years now.

After twenty-five years, the French store all their so-called waste in one room, under La Hague, which is about the size of a basketball gymnasium.

Why haven't you heard this? A writer for the New Yorker magazine named John McPhee in 1974 published a highly influential book called The Curve of Binding Energy, which convinced President Jimmy Carter (et al.) that people could steal used plutonium from nuclear plants and makes bombs with it. But this is untrue. Nevertheless, solely on the basis of this detrimental misinformation, our country now has fifty thousand tons of nuclear "waste," because our government won't allow nuclear plants to reuse it.

Why is it whenever I or anyone else talks about FUSION energy, we always end up talking about something else, like fission, cold fusion, etc.

Thermonuclear fusion has nothing to do with fission, "nuclear energy", "cold fusion", hydrogen cells, radioactive waste, uranium, plutonium, or anything else. I only emphasize this distinction because people seem to want to lump them all together.

when the blue strip turns white....

my sim city 2000 city runs on fusion, and man is it growing. i'm a great mayor.

It's not a knock against you, HB. I just want to make sure that everyone is clear. If anything, it is LW that constantly confuses these things.