Fusion has the exact same issue as every other “heat steam to drive a turbine” power plant:
Cooling.
There’s no way around it and you can calculate it.
Power output in W * (100 - efficiency %) / 100 = Heat output
That heat needs to go somewhere. Sure you can use it to heat homes in winter.
But in summer, even along major rivers, power plants already need to throttle down in order to not kill all water life downstream and turn the river into smelly sludge. In summer there’s no demand for heat, there is more demand for electricity, there’s less water in the river, and that water is already warmer.
Fusion power is no solution for this.
Solar and wind power are. They don’t need to be cooled. And the technology already exists, and is cheaper than fossil fuels or nuclear TODAY. All we need to do is scale them up.
Fusion has the exact same issue as every other “heat steam to drive a turbine” power plant:
Cooling.
There’s no way around it and you can calculate it.
Power output in W * (100 - efficiency %) / 100 = Heat output
That heat needs to go somewhere. Sure you can use it to heat homes in winter.
But in summer, even along major rivers, power plants already need to throttle down in order to not kill all water life downstream and turn the river into smelly sludge. In summer there’s no demand for heat, there is more demand for electricity, there’s less water in the river, and that water is already warmer.
Fusion power is no solution for this.
Solar and wind power are. They don’t need to be cooled. And the technology already exists, and is cheaper than fossil fuels or nuclear TODAY. All we need to do is scale them up.
Oh yeah? What happens when we run out of wind?
Just wait until the wind wars start. The US will over-build windmills, blocking all wind to Canada. That’ll be the end of peace.
There are fusion plants that directly extract usable power using magnetic fields. It’s not just a complicated steam power.