Money is not fungible when it’s never in the hands of a person or organization who is going to make the binary decision of investing in fusion vs. investing in renewables. You are creating a false dilemma that does not actually exist in real life. Furthermore, if you really cared about advancing the cause of solar and wind, you would take that tenor and energy towards attacking fossil fuels, rather than a completely marginal segment of the power generation pie.
Nobody is choosing between backing a fusion startup or a coal mine.
They are, instead, choosing among forward-looking long shots, such as perovskite PV, battery chemistry, ammonia synthesis catalysts. Any of those have a chance of producing something of value. The people hawking fusion are taking exactly those dollars. Those dollars then do not go to the projects that could possibly do some good.
Are there any actual cases of government grants or investor capital being forced to decide between fusion and renewable startups? Or are you just assuming that this is a scenario that exists somewhere?
You have your belief in the clear way for energy production, that is fine; you have made yourself abundantly and repeatedly clear. But this whole idea of a zero-sum game between nuclear and renewables seems to be based on pure assumption.
I don't think Altman would've backed solar if not for Helion; those who are pursuing fusion startups are self-selecting for the latter, and wouldn't have backed renewables anyway.
Sam's project is not obviously fraudulent. But it also is not what the article was about. All fusion startups except Sam's are obviously fraudulent, as they all depend upon burning tritium that cannot be obtained, among numerous other intractable problems. ITER, likewise.
Sam's depends on 3He which is even rarer, but for which they have not obviously unworkable plans to breed in their reactor. Even if those don't work, the reactor could be usable in spacecraft relying on the limited supply, as we do for plutonium in thermoelectric generators sent to the outer solar system..
