Renewables

[Rynn]

Regarding fusion in small (as in smaller than a ten-storey building) units, it looks to me (I have a science degree but I'm no engineer) that DPF (dense plasma focus) fusion shows more promise than any of the Polywell variants. It looks as if the units might be as small as a large domestic fridge and cost maybe $50k, to start - of course, if production ramps up they will get cheaper and may get smaller.

$50,000 and smaller than a fridge? What's the estimated power output on a thing like that? Like with most things fusion sounds too good to be true. I don't have the expertise to judge whether or not DPF is promising (I've read a few articles and seen a few videos) but I'm skeptical on the grounds that we've been chasing this dream for the better part of a century and we're still not beyond lab prototypes. I'm not dismissing fusion power itself but if anything it's shown itself to be entirely non-trivial, so much so that I tend to rule it out in discussions of future energy production in the mid-future (decades).