I'd love for commercial fusion power generation to be a reality but I'm skeptical that, at a minimum, hydrogen fusion will ever be practical. The reasons have remained a problem for considerable period of time:
1. Containing a hydrogen plasma involves containing a superheated turbulent fluid. This is inherently unstable that will be sensitive to very minor defects;
2. A superheated plasma produces a lot of high velocity particles. Those not contained by magnetic containment tend to destroy the container (ie "neutron embrittlement"); and
3. Possibly the biggest problem of all: neutrons represent energy loss by the system and there's no currently viable way of solving this problem.
To solve (2) and (3) various groups research so-called "aneutronic" fusion. I put that in quotes because it's just a lot less neutrons generally, not no neutrons.
Helium-3 fusion is one possibility but He-3 is exceedingly rare. The best source may be from the solar wind being collected on the Moon's surface. As you can imagine that presents it's own set of challenges to mine, contain and return.
Hydrogen fusion uses heavier isotopes of hydrogen (ie deuterium with 1 neutron and/or tritium with 2). Why? Because we currently need these neutrons to feed the fusion reaction.
And after all this we extract heat to boil water to turn a turbine. This too adds to cost and complexity.
Personally I think the future of humanity's energy production is space-based solar power collectors.
If it's aneutronic fusion, you don't need a turbine. You have fast-moving charged particles, and can probably figure out a way to do direct conversion. Helion has already demonstrated it in their latest reactor.
They use a hybrid D-D/D-He3 reaction. The He3 is the waste product of the D-D reactions. They say the combination will release only 6% of its energy as neutron radiation, which is why they can skip the turbine.
1. Containing a hydrogen plasma involves containing a superheated turbulent fluid. This is inherently unstable that will be sensitive to very minor defects;
2. A superheated plasma produces a lot of high velocity particles. Those not contained by magnetic containment tend to destroy the container (ie "neutron embrittlement"); and
3. Possibly the biggest problem of all: neutrons represent energy loss by the system and there's no currently viable way of solving this problem.
To solve (2) and (3) various groups research so-called "aneutronic" fusion. I put that in quotes because it's just a lot less neutrons generally, not no neutrons.
Helium-3 fusion is one possibility but He-3 is exceedingly rare. The best source may be from the solar wind being collected on the Moon's surface. As you can imagine that presents it's own set of challenges to mine, contain and return.
Hydrogen fusion uses heavier isotopes of hydrogen (ie deuterium with 1 neutron and/or tritium with 2). Why? Because we currently need these neutrons to feed the fusion reaction.
And after all this we extract heat to boil water to turn a turbine. This too adds to cost and complexity.
Personally I think the future of humanity's energy production is space-based solar power collectors.