The latest venture at Culham — the hub of UK fusion research for decades — is a demonstration plant for General Fusion (GF), a company based in Burnaby, Canada. It is scheduled to start operating in 2025, and the company aims to have reactors for sale in the early 2030s. It “will be the first power-plant-relevant large-scale demonstration”, says GF’s chief executive Chris Mowry — unless, that is, its competitors deliver sooner.
Long derided as a prospect that is forever 30 years away, nuclear fusion seems finally to be approaching commercial viability. There are now more than 30 private fusion firms globally, according to an October survey by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) in Washington DC, which represents companies in the sector; the 18 firms that have declared their funding say they have attracted more than US$2.4 billion in total, almost entirely from private investments (see ‘Fusion funding’). Key to these efforts are advances in materials research and computing that are enabling technologies other than the standard designs that national and international agencies have pursued for so long.
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586 ... index.html
A long but worthwhile read.
When reading the document it is clear why ITER is going to take another 40 years and not produce much energy. God knows why they are building something so massive? To consume billions of state funds? Because they are only talking about showing tiny amounts of energy returned from a truly massive structure which will take decades to complete.
The private companies are going small scale and proving their technology before ramping up.
It is fairly clear, over the last few decades, which process produces the best results.
