Fusion Breeding and Pure Fusion Development - Perceptions and Misperceptions

Economic fusion power will not come quickly or cheaply, despite claims to the contrary. There has been a flurry of promises of rapid development by 'fusion start ups', motivated in part by a perceived climate crisis. These are two misperceptions, there is no climate crisis, and it is way premature to promise pilot plants in a decade or so; these efforts will all fail. Furthermore, pure fusion will not be delivering significant power to the grid in this century, if ever. There are just too many hoops it has to jump through in too short a time. Fusion breeding, demanding about an order of magnitude less performance from the fusion reactor just might be able to deliver. An optimum plan for making fusion breeding a reality, not too long after midcentury is suggested for both magnetic fusion and laser fusion. This plan eliminates the DEMO in magnetic fusion, ITER becomes an end in itself; and eliminates one of the proposed steps in a laser fusion development plan (1).

1. Steven Bodner, Letter to NAS laser fusion study group, Dec, 2011.