Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion. The holy grail of energy. Clean, limitless, and always "just 30 years away." We've been hearing that since Harold Wilson was banging on about the "white heat of technology." Yet here we are, decades later, still waiting for the miracle to land.

The latest projections? Optimists claim grid-ready fusion by the 2030s. Realists lean towards 2050. Even if they crack the physics – which is no small feat – the economics look ropey. Fusion's levelised cost of energy is pegged at around $121 per megawatt-hour. Compare that to solar and wind, comfortably sitting between $29 and $46 per megawatt-hour. One is powering homes today. The other is still burning through billions in research grants.

Then there's the fuel. Fusion reactors need tritium – a rare, radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The global stockpile? About 25 to 30 kilograms. Enough to power a couple of test reactors, not a fleet of commercial plants. It's currently harvested from heavy water reactors like Canada's ageing CANDU fleet, and at around $40,000 a gram, it's hardly flowing like tap water. Future reactors promise to breed their own tritium by bombarding lithium, but that's still theoretical. Without that breakthrough, fusion is like a car without petrol – clever but stationary.

Even if the tech works, the capital costs will be astronomical. Building a single fusion plant could run up to $9,700 per kilowatt of capacity. Solar and wind? Less than a third of that. And they’re already here, already cheap, already getting cheaper. Renewables might be intermittent, but batteries and grid management are advancing faster than fusion ever has.

So, while the boffins tinker and the headlines gush about "breakthroughs," the reality is stark. Fusion won't save us from the climate crisis. Not in time, not at scale, and certainly not at a price anyone sane would pay. It’s not the white knight – it's a money pit with better PR. If we’re serious about clean energy, we’d be doubling down on what works now, not punting our hopes on a technology that’s always just out of reach.