Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

Re:Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be by MR4D on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:22PM (#14208952)

I'm not the OP, but here's a few thoughts...

Highly distributed rotating masses would handle a large part of the storage, turning it into more of a power smoothing problem.

Secondly, I presume that at some point we'll be covering every building (rooftop and window) with some sort of solar film that converts electricity.

Why don't we have those today in large scale production? Probably for the same reason that the US builds more roads instead of mass transit - it's a bias to build what we've alway built, not a real technological limitation.

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Re:Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be by ianai on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:49PM (#14209041)

There's definitely a link between where it's economical to place a panel and panel efficiency. As the technology matures it will make sense to place it more places. I think at some point, ultimately, it will be in the paint of cars/buildings.

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Re:Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be by MR4D on Thursday April 27, 2017 @12:03AM (#14209086)

Exactly. Just like Moore's law drove the price of computing power to put it practically everywhere, there is a cost curve for solar that will do the same.

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