If they’d put as much money on it as they’re throwing away on LLMs, yesterday.
That’s not even a joke.
The most pessimistic cost for ITER, the first real fusion reactor, is 65 billion dollars in total.
In the last two years, we (people) have spent over 600 billion dollars on LLM shit. Mostly datacenters and GPUs.
stares at the sun
We’re very close. I think it was only a few years ago that we first got more energy back than we put in. That’s a big milestone.
At the risk of getting roughed up in the replies…
I think AI will be the missing key. The ability to micromanage millions of inputs at once and respond with control corrections in microseconds can push this over the top. I’ve read of some progress on this front already.
Nooooo, do you really think we’ll need a computer to run it? You don’t say, and I thought we’d just use one of the big 1920s lever boards with lots of Frankenstein style switches and big manual valves and just work really really fast.
It’s hilarious that you’re phrasing as if the software is the problem, and the gigantic, multi billion dollar facility that is required to do it.
In 30 years, by tradition.
Agreed. We will definitely have it by 2056. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/22/us/new-fusion-method-may-create-50-more-energy.html
2 thoughts.
-
Might be never.
-
I’m not convinced it would be a good thing if we did. Natural systems find homeostasis that keep the system balanced. Human intelligence have systematically removed these natural barriers (tool use, agriculture, division of labour, metalurgy, medicine, industrial revolution, fossil fuels, green revolution, chemistry, computers etc…) as such, we blew past all semblance of sustainability. Each time we lifted a barrier that was a limiting factor, our population and environmental footprint grew exponentially.
Now we are in a state of severe ecological overshoot. We have crossed 7 of 9 planetary boundaries. and our crisis is that we are converting our planet into something that can’t sustain us.
If we figure out cold fusion, there is a better than not chance we will just lift one more barrier that will allow us to further destroy all the rest.
I’m not against fusion energy if possible, I’m just not convinced it won’t be another nail in our coffin. I don’t see humanity’s maturity growing to accomodate our current technology to alter our likely fate, and near limitless energy solves humanity’s problems like carfentanyl solved the heroin addicts problems.
The flaw in this thinking is that massive destruction and extinction is one of the ways natural systems maintain themselves.
The earth has never been in homeostasis, 99.9% of species are extinct, and the planet is a lot more likely to survive than humans are.
our conduct is perfectly natural and playing out a lot faster than most natural systems that take millions of years to extinct a species sometimes
Apologies for poetic license in the name of brevity.
The problem with your thinking is that you thought I used the term homeostasis as if it meant unchanging, rather than the dynamic rebalancing that keeps a system viable. The system being the ecosphere.
the planet is a lot more likely to survive than humans are.
My point exactly. The planet is a rock. The ecosphere is a complex system that is in deep, deep trouble. It’s only a problem if you value humanity and the flora and fauna that nurtured us into existance. It seems you don’t.
-
I’m sure we’ll have it by 2076 in time for a nuclear winter.
No
About 6 weeks after the last person in this thread dies
