People say that fusion will use very cheap and harmless fuel to generate energy. But practically the real fuel will be all the replacement parts that will be constantly degraded and used up to maintain it’s operation.
That’s true if of any power plant though. It’ll still be cheaper and safer (if it ever works).
It’s not like building a hydroelectric dam, this is stuff on the edge of science, so of course you can’t get an accurate budget or timeline estimate. The 10 years was probably to placate governments and fundraiser members.
Practical engineering did a great video on why this happens.
So, thus far, the cost of ITER is less than the Manhattan project, but it has taken longer. The adage that it is easier to destroy than to create comes to mind.
It does seem like ITER could be more transparent, but the article is overly hyperbolic about one of the most important civil works going over time and budget.
America has spent 5x the ITER budget on Ukraine so far (and rightly so). I wish we lived in a world where that money could have supported research projects like this instead.
If you look at this chart from the article the delays actually look pretty reasonable and you can see them closing in on completion. Looks like been a series of set backs in the recent past with particular components but I think a budget comparable to the Manhattan Project (as the article states) is probably pretty reasonable for a project like this. In fact I was pretty surprised it was that small.
Yeah, this really doesn’t look even remotely surprising to me.
Absolutely everyone involved should already understand that they are not building something that they know how to build.
Sure, they have plans, and they can build to exactly those plans… But even then, there is no guarantee at all that they will then achieve net positive fusion energy. Because nobody has done that in a controlled reaction.
But it’s also not like the rest of the world is sitting still. Other projects exist, and sometimes those projects are going to learn things that will impact the design of ITER.
For that matter, even if they have the plans, some of the pieces are things that nobody has ever built on that scale before, which means that nobody really knows how to build them until they try.
This is a really good example of a project that you can not accurately estimate.
