Solar panels (+ synthetic fossil fuel generation if you need unlimited energy storage) would be orders of magnitude cheaper way to achieve that.

That would be a valid argument if the only alternative to fusion was petroleum.

Exactly. Beyond power generation, humanity still uses petroleum products in their chemical industry. Which is why the shutoff of Russian natural gas hurts Germany much more than other countries, they now have a starving chemical sector.

I'm confused by this. Does the US have the productive forces and resources to replace petrolium with solar panels (and the required energy storage)? Does it have the nuclear fuel to replace petrolium with fission reactors?

What alternatives to petrolium does the US have that it does not rely on others for?

What scheme do you imagine that fusion could be used to replace petroleum that would not also work when powered by solar? Production of synfuels using hydrogen, for example, would also deal with solar's intermittency, leaving the energy sources to compete on the basis of levelized cost. The levelized cost of solar has become quite low, and it's very difficult to see how any fusion scheme, and DT fusion in particular, will ever compete.

I specifically asked about the production of solar panels. Are you assuming that we already have all the panels we need to replace petrolium sitting in a warehouse? What good is solar in an energy independence plan if we can't build our own panels?

What? Production of solar panels is just a matter of building and running more factories. There's no significant limit to this.

Nuclear fuel actually isn't that expensive or rare

Those crazy sci-fi stories from the 30s and 50s where everyone used nuclear power (and it was so cheap they didn't bother to meter it) were all completely accurate from a non-political viewpoint

Oh, interesting. I read/heard a few places that most fuel used for fission was controlled by a few countries. I was unaware it was abundant.

The stuff is kind of all over the place, but it's not high purity. The engineering to refine the material is highly controlled.

Foreign energy reliance is finished and has been for some time. North America can produce more petroleum energy than it uses. In both 2020 and 2021 the US was a net petroleum exporter.

Military interventions to blow up other people’s under construction fusion reactors will still be a thing, worry not