Will Fusion Fizzle?

Following up on our previous post. As is always the case with technologies that are still on the horizon, reasonable estimates of timelines and economics vary widely with fusion power. Unfortunately, the dominant voices in the discussion—the people journalists are most eager to cite and treat as authoritative—are some of the least trustworthy people you'll find, operating under some of the largest conflicts of interest imaginable. Pitchmen vying for billions of dollars in venture capital are treated as reliable and independent experts on the subject, telling their stories to journalists who never saw a gee-whiz, the-future-is-now story that they didn't rush to print. Take Hellion which basically pulled an operational date of 2028 out of its ass. In case you're curious, orifice-derived estimates will get you around $1.5 billion in today's market. On top of that, we need to remember that the push for fusion startups is tied in with a highly representative example of the techno-optimist…