Elusive fusion reactors to be commercialised by 2025-2030... Or so they say

Mr Jack said:
I suspect our future energy needs are going to be met much more by solar and battery than by fusion. With the prices of solar dropping like a stone, working Fusion is going to be too late and too costly to make much of a difference. Solar can provide almost all the energy needed for free with less difficulties and risks.



Free energy would change a lot of things, and happily destroy the power of oil oligarchs, but it wouldn't fundamentally obliterate the economy. Everything would still be constrained by the limits of infrastructure and logistics, and the availability of resources, land, and labour. Energy is just one limited input among many.
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Not sure I agree there. With increased automation and AI, unlimited "free"/cheap energy obliterates our current economic model.
 
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Jono8 said:
Not sure I agree there. With increased automation and AI, unlimited "free"/cheap energy obliterates our current economic model.
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The "with increased automation and AI" is doing a lot of work there. It seems to me that if we get AI and automation that can actually do that then the thing that is obliterating the economic model is not that cheap energy but the automation and AI. Abundant and cheap energy alone will change things but it doesn't fundamentally undermine the economic model we use, everything is still limited by something and thus supply and demand will still apply. Just because you can now power your factory for a tuppence-ha'penny does mean you don't need to buy raw materials, pay for staff and distribution, and invest in the space and machines to do the building.
 
Well they're predicting hundreds of new datacentres in the UK which are going to need a substantial amount of power. It's going to be interesting how we meet those energy needs. Energy trading is going to be vital without being able to generate enough ourselves via renewables. Ideally we'd get a blend of renewables and nuclear but they both take a LONG time to deliver. So we'll have to carry on importing from Europe - hopefully we can decommission gas.
 
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I'm just back from lunch with my brother and apparently my nephew's first project is to design a tokamak. And then they're going to build it.
 
Mr Jack said:
The "with increased automation and AI" is doing a lot of work there. It seems to me that if we get AI and automation that can actually do that then the thing that is obliterating the economic model is not that cheap energy but the automation and AI. Abundant and cheap energy alone will change things but it doesn't fundamentally undermine the economic model we use, everything is still limited by something and thus supply and demand will still apply. Just because you can now power your factory for a tuppence-ha'penny does mean you don't need to buy raw materials, pay for staff and distribution, and invest in the space and machines to do the building.
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Well they sort of go hand in hand.

If automation and AI, robotics etc can be given immense amounts of cheap renewable energy etc, then it will accelerate their influence even more.

What I'm getting at is that there will largely be few jobs for humans to actually do if we have cheap and almost limitless energy.
 
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