One of the key arguments here at Solar Noon is we don’t have time for that shit, referring to the nonsense that distracts us from the solar future that’s already within our grasp today. Here’s a perfect example: a splashy National Geographic cover story on the giant fusion project “ITER”. The online version of the article, “Inside the long-shot megaproject that aims to solve our energy worries forever” is locked for subscribers (like me, currently), but read on and you won’t miss much. You’re not missing much regardless.

Fusion is that other kind of nuclear reaction, the one that generates energy by atoms smashing together, as opposed to fission, the one that splits them. Fission is what’s used in the nuclear power plants of the past: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Homer Simpson’s Springfield. The magical unicorn promise of fusion is that it has less radioactive waste (but not none!) and can theoretically provide a lot more power.

The key word in that last sentence is theoretically. A lot of smart folks who know about such things aren’t too keen on the whole idea:

Daniel Jassby, who worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab for 25 years, wrote after his retirement that a fusion plant would be too convoluted, requiring endless maintenance, and “cause more problems than it would solve.” The late Lawrence Lidsky, an associate director of MIT’s fusion center and founding editor of the Journal of Fusion Energy, declared after a long career that fusion power is a fantasy, noting that it’s widely regarded as “the hardest scientific and technical problem ever tackled.” Walter Marshall, former chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, reportedly said that “fusion is an idea with infinite possibility and zero chance of success.”

The entire framing of this article is insane. It’s practically a manifesto of how impractical, complicated, expensive, misguided and crazy this whole project is, but cast in the heroic light of amazement and wonder. Which I suppose is on brand for National Geographic: audacious and amazing and impractical stuff, pictures of rare wildlife, etc. Another article in the same issue is about an 18-year-old who’s climbed the world’s 14 tallest peaks. But the subtitle of this ITER article is, The race is on to harness the near-infinite power of nuclear fusion—by building a star on Earth. And scientists are closer than you might think. Scientists, you learn after reading the whole thing, are actually farther away than you think:

The strange truth of ITER, however, is that it will never produce power. The machine is strictly an experiment to prove that all the steps are achievable. Steam turbines, old technology well understood, will presumably be installed in later generations of fusion plants that will be built all over the world. This step could easily be more than 50 years away.

Realize, dear reader, that this effort started in 1958. Construction of the facility featured in this article didn’t even start until 2007. In 2022 they made headlines around the world for a huge milestone: installing one – one! of nine! – of the central “vacuum vessel modules” that’s essential to part of the design. Yet that was so badly botched that they had to tear it all out and start over, a mistake that cost them years. At the cost of billions of dollars, of course - though the thing’s been dragging on so long that nobody’s really sure how much total money it’s burned yet (the US Dept. of Energy estimates $65 billion, and counting).

That’s all public money, from countries all over the world (the international cooperation behind this boondoggle is actually a pretty nice story, if surely sanitized in Nat Geo style), but there are also a bunch of private companies trying to crack this nut. Let’s stop pouring taxpayer money into the 270-million degree plasma that will never exist inside this “most complex machine humans have ever attempted to build”. And let’s stop looking to these ‘so crazy it just might work’ long shots.

Fusion, observers like to say, is 20 years away—and always will be.

Meanwhile, as the world outside of Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France continues to burn, we have the technology right now, today, this minute, to replace fossil fuels with clean energy. Those technologies – solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage – are all advancing at a fantastic pace, too. Their research and deployment could absolutely use billions of public dollars, and they will start putting out the climate fires immediately. They’re also easily distributable and installable all over the world. Even if there were some magic breakthrough and someone figured out how to build these “most complex machines humans have ever attempted” today, how soon do you suppose they’re going to pop up in Africa, or Southeast Asia, or Mississippi? It’s ludicrous to suggest this technology fantasy has the slightest bearing on “solving our energy worries”, so let’s just not, okay?

Great news from The Guardian: law changes could soon bring balcony solar to millions across US

Balcony solar panels are now widespread in countries such as Germany – where more than 1m homes have them – but have until now been stymied in the US by state regulations. This is set to change, with lawmakers in New York and Pennsylvania filing bills to join Utah in adopting permission for the panels, with Vermont, Maryland and New Hampshire set to follow suit soon.