If they can get a continuous fusion reaction going converting the heat energy from that to electricity won't be a problem. Getting a contained fusion reaction that gives out more energy than input is the problem how to convert that into electricity is not going to be a problem.
> If they can get a continuous fusion reaction going converting the heat energy from that to electricity won't be a problem.
Even accepting the qualification that's not just a mere matter of engineering, capturing that heat from a source that hot is not without trouble. A bit like how there is plenty of energy in a single lightning strike and yet we can't easily catch it even though in principle 'just build a large enough capacitor and connect it to a lightning rod' is a workable recipe.
> Getting a contained fusion reaction that gives out more energy than input is the problem
Not in the least because the container itself is a very hard problem to solve.
> how to convert that into electricity is not going to be a problem.
It is also a problem, albeit a lesser one.
The better way to look at all of these fusion projects is a way to do an end run around arms control limitations with as a very unlikely by-product the possible future generation of energy. But I would not hold my breath for that. Meanwhile, I'm all for capturing more of the energy output by that other fusion reactor that we all have access to, and learning how to store it over longer periods. Preferably to start with a couple of days with something that doesn't degrade (think very high density super capacitor rather than a battery), but I'll take advanced battery technology if it can be done cheap enough per storage cycle. We're getting there.
It doesn't make heat. It makes fast neutrons. Turning them into usable heat is a project of its own.
Turning dumb heat into electric power is expensive. Nothing that depends on doing that can ever compete with wind and solar, anymore.
Tritium doesn't grow on trees. Making it by blasting those hot neutrons into a thousand tons of FLiBe is easy enough. Getting your few grams a day, at PPB concentration, out of that thousand tons of stuff is... nobody has any idea how. But you need to, to have fuel for tomorrow.
No, there won't be any of that. It would be fantastically more expensive than fission. Fission is not competitive, and gets less so by the day. Fusion is nothing but a money pit (with the just barely-possible exception of D-3He).
Saying that there are unknown engineering challenges is kind of a "duh", otherwise we wouldn't be researching we would be implementing. As you also mentioned there are other alternatives which we could consider than tritium.
> Fission is not competitive, and gets less so by the day.
> Fusion is nothing but a money pit (with the just barely-possible exception of D-3He).
We genuinely don't know if fusion is a money pit or not, because we don't have any idea how much a successful form will cost. Tritium blankets may be easy or not. Maybe helion's D-3HE will have a breakthrough. Maybe it's ICF.
I've not seen suggestions by anyone that wind and solar build-outs stop, or get diminished. Indeed at this point because the cost are low, industry will continue to invest in them regardless.
However, we will need a lot more energy production than folks think. We need to decarbonize the atmosphere. And that's going to require a lot of power.
All that aside, solar and wind are not getting you to mars in a timely fashion. We have reasons to research fusion that escape large commercial power generation.
We certainly need a lot more energy production but to decarbonize the atmosphere there has be a target level with an evidential basis on which to proceed. If it's considered (as by many) that we have a climate emergency (though this is not reported at all in the IPCC report) then any decarbonization at all will obviously serve for starters. If this is not the case then there are other considerations such as the fact that as CO2 levels have risen so has global food production - about 30% over the last 30 years.
Simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau..
https://sites.bu.edu/cliveg/files/2016/04/zhu-greening-earth...
This is not a surprise given that carbon is needed for plant growth, a fact well understood by commercial growers who pipe CO2 into their greenhouses. So one issue might be, if decarbonization is successful then what might be the acceptable level of reduction in global food supply?
Another issue relates to temperature. From an analysis of 974 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries it’s been concluded that twenty times more people die from the cold as from the heat.https://composite-indicators.jrc.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/... A recent paper (Dec 12 2022) regarding heart attacks states “extreme temperatures accounted for 2.2 additional deaths per 1,000 on hot days and 9.1 additional deaths per 1,000 on cold days.” Circulation. doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061832.
Do any of the reports present an ethical problem? No, they do not given an extreme interpretation of climate models.
