When Will Fusion Power Transform Society?

Once fusion power has been invented, how long will it take before it transforms the economy?

We are getting ever closer to getting the first fusion reactor working. Maybe we will have it in 5–10 years. It hard to tell. People have said fusion power is 10–20 years away for more than 40 years. But I would be an utter cynic to not recognize all the progress currently being made.

Let’s say that we get fusion power working in 8 years. That is in 2030. At what point in time will fusion power transform our economy? By that I mean when will a significant fraction of our energy production be from fusion power. That will impact our economy and emissions.

Why don’t we look at past technologies and see how long time it took for them to transform society. The first working Nuclear power reactor got built in 1942. A whole 18 years later in 1960 there was only 17 reactor in operation world wide. These produced 1200 MW together. The Hoover dam had been built already in the 1940s long before that. It produced 4 000 000 MW.

We can look at wind power. Denmark installed their first wind turbine in 1977. Yet if we look at power generation in Denmark, it took quite a lot of time before Wind power started having any impact on Danish power production. For a…