Going all in on solar and batteries either requires nuclear energy, thereby raising power costs, or natural gas, which means we can’t make our 2050 goals. We simply can’t manufacture the panels and batteries fast enough, the latter especially if we also want to decarbonise transportation.
Fusion won’t come fast enough for the climate crisis. But it may be relevant for complete decarbonisation, e.g. replacing the natural gas plants we’re spinning up as quickly as we’re deploying solar.
…why? If you want massive lasers you use a nuke to power it [1][2].
> If you think "practical energy source" is what fusion research is really about
Outside the NIF, which is openly about stockpile stewardship, yeah. That’s what it’s about. Tokomaks aren’t militarily useful.
The biggest downside to solar is the amount of surface area required and cost per panel. Not to mention the amount of rare earth required to make just one.
I’d be interested in much power fusion will output in terms of square footage and cost to compare them directly.
Regarding the amount of rare earth required to make just one solar panel, i was surprised to find out that effectively all you need is something called 'silicon' as well as an initial investment in energy to bake the thing.
It just so happens to be that, according to google, this 'silicon' stuff is quite abundant and can for example be found in desert sand.
Since you can stack those fusion reactors vertically, i suppose they'd come out on top in the power/sqft category.
Fusion will be important for the future of humanity, especially in deep space, so we should keep researching and developing it. But it's not relevant to the climate crisis... the already existing technologies have that covered, we only need to deploy them faster.