While it would last a long time at current levels, the supply of fission materials is quite limited when you’re looking into interstellar travel etc. That’s really the promise of fusion it’s an unimaginably vast energy source for the future.
As to more sort term concerns, fission has a lot of very expensive requirements like 24/7/365 security which make it difficult to integrate with vastly cheaper renewables. Baseline power sources like nuclear and coal wind are at a massive disadvantage when integrating with significantly cheaper wind and solar. They lose significant amounts of money during part of the day and need much higher premiums the rest of the day to make up for it.
In today’s energy market there is definitely a place for fission. However, with a 50 year payback period you need to project into future energy markers with even cheaper solar, wind, and batteries. That’s why electricity companies generally view it as a dead end. Fusion is a larger unknown, it’s probably not going to be cost effective but it’s also the kind of long shot that might just pay off.
> the supply of fission materials is quite limited when you’re looking into interstellar travel etc
Yeah, sure, if we're gonna get a big spaceship to even a small fraction of light speed, that would require absolutely stupendous amounts of energy.
But lets worry about that after we avoid cooking ourselves with GHG emissions? We might or might not have enough fission fuel for large-scale interstellar travel, but certainly more than enough to get rid of fossil fuels.
> fission has a lot of very expensive requirements like 24/7/365 security
So will fusion, unfortunately, unless someone figures out aneutronic fusion, which is a much longer shot than D-T fusion most efforts are concentrating on.
I'm all for spending a lot more on fusion R&D though; the potential win is just so enormously large that it makes sense to bet some amount of resources on it, just in case it works out.
As to more sort term concerns, fission has a lot of very expensive requirements like 24/7/365 security which make it difficult to integrate with vastly cheaper renewables. Baseline power sources like nuclear and coal wind are at a massive disadvantage when integrating with significantly cheaper wind and solar. They lose significant amounts of money during part of the day and need much higher premiums the rest of the day to make up for it.
In today’s energy market there is definitely a place for fission. However, with a 50 year payback period you need to project into future energy markers with even cheaper solar, wind, and batteries. That’s why electricity companies generally view it as a dead end. Fusion is a larger unknown, it’s probably not going to be cost effective but it’s also the kind of long shot that might just pay off.