I am very excited to see fusion work, simply for the psychological benefit that the future is happening.
With that said, I think you might want to contrast the potential gains if openAI succeeds just a little bit past what they already shipped, vs if Commonwealth demonstrates net energy gain.
If openAI addresses the biggest limitation of current gpt-4, which is an inability to self analyze its own output, researching factual claims, running generated code and checking math problems - simply learning from objective mistakes will turn it from a fun toy to essential.
Theoretically with large scale learning the model hallucinations and error rate should drop below most human experts, and it will also be better at any task that can be checked. So any math or cs problem below a certain length, the tool will be faster and better than humans.
This means the net value created is the (size of the white collar stem economy—cost to run the model)
If openAI extends to robotics this becomes (size of ~50 percent of human economy - (cost of robots + cost of compute))
If Commonwealth succeeds, it is likely that their equipment will cost more than any current power generation per watt. But ok with mass subsidies and investment the cost could come down to some “steady state” cost for massive superconducting magnets and a n enormous amount of support equipment.
At steady state, is the cost lower than (solar + batteries + methane backup generation with a carbon tax) in the year the tech is cost reduced)? Both solar and batteries are still dropping in price so this is a moving target.
If you try to look past hype and just look at fundamentals, factoring in perovskite cells and sodium batteries....I don’t know. Gut feel is a fusion reactor has thousands of unique parts and skilled labor is needed to construct one. Quality must be very high or fusion wont be stable and the plant fails. (And is probably not cheap to fix..imagine trying to rip out a damaged magnet from the hundreds of pipes and wires around it..)
My hunch is at scale, optimally producing solar panels and batteries from cheap raw materials with robots will probably beat fusion at any achievable price for fusion. The only use for fusion is if humans run out of cheap land on earth for solar (and all the roofs etc) or spacecraft.
summary: in order for fusion to create any net value it must beat the future cost of improved solar and batteries at the year fusion equipment is being mass produced. If it doesn’t, the value of fusion is negative and it will not be adopted.
The cost to build a tokamak that is projected to reach Q~10 has fallen by more than a factor of 10 in the last 6 years. CFS is building for $2B what ITER is building for maybe $22B, maybe $65B (cost estimates vary).
It’s really not clear what the cost of fusion will end up being once it becomes mass produced.
1.8 trillion is currently spent globally to generate electric power.
96.5 trillion is current world GDP.
If AI automation can reduce the cost of 50% of jobs by 50%, then it’s value per year is 24 trillion. (much more because AI will enable to the economy to grow)
Obviously if fusion makes electricity cost $0, free, it’s value created per year is 1.8 trillion. More realistically, competitive fusion will probably not reduce costs at all—it will simply reduce carbon emissions, which is a cost not priced into that “1.8T” figure. If we say the cost of the carbon emissions are $75 a ton, and 36.8 gigatons are global carbon emissions for electric power generation, then $2.76 trillion is the “externalities” from generating electricity.
So if fusion costs the same as current equipment at scale, then the benefit from fusion is $2.76 trillion.
Also, electric power is usually not the bottleneck resource for economic growth. It’s a necessary condition but human labor, IP, economic systems that don’t allow mass amounts of theft and inefficiencies—these I think contribute much more.
I am very excited to see fusion work, simply for the psychological benefit that the future is happening.
With that said, I think you might want to contrast the potential gains if openAI succeeds just a little bit past what they already shipped, vs if Commonwealth demonstrates net energy gain.
If openAI addresses the biggest limitation of current gpt-4, which is an inability to self analyze its own output, researching factual claims, running generated code and checking math problems - simply learning from objective mistakes will turn it from a fun toy to essential.
Theoretically with large scale learning the model hallucinations and error rate should drop below most human experts, and it will also be better at any task that can be checked. So any math or cs problem below a certain length, the tool will be faster and better than humans.
This means the net value created is the (size of the white collar stem economy—cost to run the model)
If openAI extends to robotics this becomes (size of ~50 percent of human economy - (cost of robots + cost of compute))
If Commonwealth succeeds, it is likely that their equipment will cost more than any current power generation per watt. But ok with mass subsidies and investment the cost could come down to some “steady state” cost for massive superconducting magnets and a n enormous amount of support equipment.
At steady state, is the cost lower than (solar + batteries + methane backup generation with a carbon tax) in the year the tech is cost reduced)? Both solar and batteries are still dropping in price so this is a moving target.
If you try to look past hype and just look at fundamentals, factoring in perovskite cells and sodium batteries....I don’t know. Gut feel is a fusion reactor has thousands of unique parts and skilled labor is needed to construct one. Quality must be very high or fusion wont be stable and the plant fails. (And is probably not cheap to fix..imagine trying to rip out a damaged magnet from the hundreds of pipes and wires around it..)
My hunch is at scale, optimally producing solar panels and batteries from cheap raw materials with robots will probably beat fusion at any achievable price for fusion. The only use for fusion is if humans run out of cheap land on earth for solar (and all the roofs etc) or spacecraft.
A big chunk of the “hunch” comes from here https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/ This shows current solar and batteries is already just a small amount of cost reduction from being strictly dominant, and this is without any improvements like perovskites or sodium.
summary: in order for fusion to create any net value it must beat the future cost of improved solar and batteries at the year fusion equipment is being mass produced. If it doesn’t, the value of fusion is negative and it will not be adopted.
The cost to build a tokamak that is projected to reach Q~10 has fallen by more than a factor of 10 in the last 6 years. CFS is building for $2B what ITER is building for maybe $22B, maybe $65B (cost estimates vary).
It’s really not clear what the cost of fusion will end up being once it becomes mass produced.
Ok, I think I may have missed a key piece above.
1.8 trillion is currently spent globally to generate electric power.
96.5 trillion is current world GDP.
If AI automation can reduce the cost of 50% of jobs by 50%, then it’s value per year is 24 trillion. (much more because AI will enable to the economy to grow)
Obviously if fusion makes electricity cost $0, free, it’s value created per year is 1.8 trillion. More realistically, competitive fusion will probably not reduce costs at all—it will simply reduce carbon emissions, which is a cost not priced into that “1.8T” figure. If we say the cost of the carbon emissions are $75 a ton, and 36.8 gigatons are global carbon emissions for electric power generation, then $2.76 trillion is the “externalities” from generating electricity.
So if fusion costs the same as current equipment at scale, then the benefit from fusion is $2.76 trillion.
Also, electric power is usually not the bottleneck resource for economic growth. It’s a necessary condition but human labor, IP, economic systems that don’t allow mass amounts of theft and inefficiencies—these I think contribute much more.