This short, 30 min, presentation will outline issues and make assertations without much justification because of time limitations. Here is the list of themes addressed.
The focus is on “Mainstream Fusion”, as well as large scale fission reactors. I will make clear what mainstream fusion is but not discuss the alternative technologies for which there is much revived interest recently.
The talk is about the prospects of fusion to produce electricity on a commercial scale. So, the discussion is about what is needed for power plants and not details about past experiments.
A theme of the talk will be responses to “Fusion Propaganda” saying that fusion is “better” than fission.
Radioactivity and safety are essential for the discussion to counter the fusion propaganda but can only be briefly presented.
The enormous size required for fusion power plants lead to enormous costs.
The byzantine complexity of fusion reactors will inevitably make them unreliable. The many ancillary systems also add to the cost.
The conclusion, that will be obvious from the tone throughout the talk, is basically that commercial fusion will never happen.
Why there is so much current interest in fusion is a subject which I cannot answer, so here I will be just making some technical arguments which seemed to me to be solid.
A lot more detail can be found on my website “Climate and Hope” which I will refer to during the talk.
