I support ITER with the caveat that whoever decided it should take decades to complete should be fired. There's no rationale for taking decades to build a fairly straightforward design Taking longer to build it actually dramatically increases the project cost while dramatically reducing the payback (i.e. solving fusion quick enough to be relevant to addressing climate change). They won't even do full fusion (i.e. payback) until 2035, and the actual power generation prototype plant isn't planned for operation until 2051, and I don't understand why people in charge have no sense of urgency here.

I'm skeptical of alt-fusion projects, but... MIT's Commonwealth Fusion SPARC reactor uses a similar Tokamak design but with much higher magnetic field superconductors to be much more compact and thus is planning on a much earlier first full fusion date of 2025, i.e. a full decade earlier and actually potentially relevant to addressing climate change: https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/cfs-commercial-fusion-powe...

Then we should fire Nixon for taking the wind out of the sail of every non-military public works project. The delays are due to the US backing out of what it originally agreed to. First plasma was nominally 20 years ago. The schedule was rewritten constantly for over a decade while the world wondered if it would ever be funded.

If it were not scheduled to take decades to build, there would be no purpose in the project at all. Like other big public-works projects, the true purpose is the gravy train of money delivered with no required result. The will'o'th'wisp "fusion" is just a distraction. Taking less time would mean cutting off the gravy early. Nobody involved wants that.

All of this would be garden-variety corruption, wholly legal under modern norms, except that a rapidly unfolding existential disaster looms: global climate disruption, and the project steals money from work that could actually help.

I don't believe that. Researchers and managers working on ITER fusion are not moustache-twirling evil villains. The fusion they're attempting to do is not will o the wisp, it's real, and they're likely to succeed at it. They'd get much more funding and prestige if they succeeded earlier.

The reason is likely just incompetence and management failure, not conspiracy to swindle money.

The managers and researchers at ITER are not swindlers. But they are obliged to do as they are told. The corruption is at the government level, where the patronage and kickbacks are arranged.

The same process occurs anywhere billions of public dollars/euros are involved, and it is not easy to track what they are supposed to buy, or how quickly results should be expected.

Since commercially competitive fusion power is already known not to be possible, no actually-useful result need ever be achieved. The longer it takes to get to the ultimate failure, the better it is for everybody actually involved. Taxpayers excepted, of course.

> Since commercially competitive fusion power is already known not to be possible

I missed that law of physics which says commercial fusion power is impossible.

You also somehow missed the word "competitive".

Massively subsidized commercial (I should qualify, here, hot-neutron) fusion power seems technically possible, and could even happen, given enough corruption. But total cost to the public will necessarily be overwhelmingly more than long mature (by then) alternatives.

It starts out many tens of $billions in the hole, before the first watt-hour comes out. And taxpayers are already paying for that, today.

Okay, the word you’re looking for is “feasible,” not “possible.” There is no law of physics that says it’s not possible to be commercially competitive, without subsidies or whatever. Words have meaning, and hyperbole should not be rewarded.

Feasible and possible are, in this instance, identical. We are out of the domain of physics, and in the domain of economics. Physics does not get exclusive claim to the word "possible".

Mealy-mouthed wishy-washiness should not be rewarded.

As someone who worked in fusion research for a few years for 30-50% of the salary that industry would pay for the same work: bullshit.

You're talking like someone who has no clue.

Maybe, as one who has clue, you can explain how a hot-neutron fusion plant could be operated much more cheaply than a fission plant of the same capacity. Because we already know fission gets less competitive each year.

(I should make clear that I make no assertion about the potential viability of aneutronic fusion. I am talking specifically about Tokamak.)

Guessing you can't, as no one else has.