I agree that fusion is feasible and will likely account for a large fraction (>20%) of energy supply by the end of the century, if all goes well. I agree that would be pretty great. And yeah, Helion looks promising.
But I don’t think we should be updating much on headlines about achieving ignition or breakeven soon. In particular, I don’t think these headlines should be significantly shifting forecasts like this one from Metaculus about timelines to >10% of energy supply coming from fusion. The main reason is that there is a very large gap between proof of concept and a cost-competitive supply of energy. Generally speaking, solar will probably remain cheaper per kWh than fusion for a long time (decades), so I don’t expect the transition to be very fast.
It’s also unclear what this should all mean for EA. One response could be: “Wow, a world with abundant energy would be amazing, we should prioritise trying to accelerate the arrival of that world.” But, I don’t know, there’s already a lot of interested capital flying around — it’s not like investors are naive to the benefits. On the government side, the bill for ITER alone was something in the order of $20 billion.
Another response could be: “Fusion is going to arrive sooner than we expected, so the world is soon going to look different from what we expected!” And I’d probably just dispute that the crowd (e.g. the Metaculus forecast above) is getting it especially wrong here in any action-relevant way. But I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.
I agree that fusion is feasible and will likely account for a large fraction (>20%) of energy supply by the end of the century, if all goes well. I agree that would be pretty great. And yeah, Helion looks promising.
But I don’t think we should be updating much on headlines about achieving ignition or breakeven soon. In particular, I don’t think these headlines should be significantly shifting forecasts like this one from Metaculus about timelines to >10% of energy supply coming from fusion. The main reason is that there is a very large gap between proof of concept and a cost-competitive supply of energy. Generally speaking, solar will probably remain cheaper per kWh than fusion for a long time (decades), so I don’t expect the transition to be very fast.
It’s also unclear what this should all mean for EA. One response could be: “Wow, a world with abundant energy would be amazing, we should prioritise trying to accelerate the arrival of that world.” But, I don’t know, there’s already a lot of interested capital flying around — it’s not like investors are naive to the benefits. On the government side, the bill for ITER alone was something in the order of $20 billion.
Another response could be: “Fusion is going to arrive sooner than we expected, so the world is soon going to look different from what we expected!” And I’d probably just dispute that the crowd (e.g. the Metaculus forecast above) is getting it especially wrong here in any action-relevant way. But I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.
Another response could be that abundant energy means more destructive power for humanity, and so even more risks.
Though in reality I do tend towards the “sounds good but there’s nothing we in particular should do about it” side.