Honest question: How much of this is engineering and how much is regulation? Everyone overestimated development cycles but if there was 0 regulation and we lived in Ayn Rands' wet dream, do you think they could be close to delivering, or no?
No. Experimental fusion reactors are not subject to the kind of scrutiny that even a coal plant would be subjected to. (Essentially very little oversight unless you start emitting a lot of ionizing radiation outside of your containment structure) When they outgrow the lab, that will start to change a bit, but we are far from net positive even in a lab environment.
Wow, is this really the case? They could go build a novel reactor without any regulatory oversight? I guess I'll look into this but honestly doesn't seem like it would be true for the US
The situation was unclear for a while, but a few months ago the NRC decided to regulate fusion reactors like particle accelerators and hospital devices, rather than like fission reactors. It was a unanimous decision by the five commissioners.[1]
According to the CEO of Helion, this essentially means they get regulated at the state level, in their case by the WA Department of Health.[2]
A poorly-designed fission reactor can turn into Chernobyl. A poorly-designed fusion reactor just doesn't work. It's not the same level of risk at all.
