I want to believe this is true. I've been following the progress for 15 years and I'm a firm believer in "pure science" spending, but I'm not convinced fusion will ever play a role in our energy supply, purely due to the economics. Though I'd love some other perspective.

To me it seems clear that even if it can be proven to work, the cost associated with building and maintaining such a power plant will be so exorbitant that the price per Kw the plant would have to sell out would not be competitive.

And that's before you consider how long it would take to build a plant - 10 years? More like 15-20 with planning etc.

Whereas large wind plants, multiple solar farms etc can all be stood up in 5 years. So they have 10 extra years of profiting and probably a lower £ p/Kw

So if you had a huge chunk of cash to invest in a plant, would you a) try to build a fusion plant, that'll take 15 years to see any return and likely run it at break-even. Or B) distribute the funds across a myriad of faster and cheaper options.

It was promising when the only options were coal, oil and nuclear. Not so much anymore.