Re: Why spend billions?
"High densities of hot plasmas more than sufficient to generate sustainable fusion reactions are achieved almost daily in parliaments and other government circles. May as well put all this hot air to good use for once no?"
Yes, that'd likely work very successfully, but I can think of at least 2 unsolvable drawbacks:
1. What can you do to prevent some totally random event causing a major energy spike and such a vast destructive thermal runaway ...
2. What do you do about the inevitable vast quantities of toxic waste the process would produce?
On the other hand, looking on the bright side, 1. might solve another of humanity's more intractable problems. Let's go for it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
