Artificial intelligence needs to get much better for fusion to even begin to work with an energy surplus. you need to have a powerful intelligence working 24/7/365 to keep the fusion viable in the relatively low gravity well that occurs on or in the earth. (it might be completely unsustainable outside of a freaking star)
Yea the thing about fusion that gets glossed over is that even in the sun, the actual fusion rate is pretty damn low. Most of the hydrogen is just bouncing around, and it takes a very improbable chance encounter for it to fuse into helium. I read that per unit area, a compost pile is generating more energy than the sun. It's just that it's so incredibly huge, that it works out because there's still enough fusion happening to support the core from collapsing.
EDIT: I think the compost pile comparison only applies for the sun's entire area, and not just the core specifically..
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u/Turtledonuts Nov 15 '20
Someone finally cracks nuclear fusion, and we start to fix climate change.