Seems like any profitable plant should count. Some designs work best at smaller scales, but if they worked out they'd be cheap and for more power you just build a lot of them. Even in fission, there's a big push now to build reactors small enough to mass-produce in factories. Maybe say at least 100MW total power?
Energy has the most externalized costs of any industry.
The 5th fleet is in the Gulf to protect the flow of Oil.
The USD is backed to some extent by petrodollar, and that is a geopolitical hammer the Americans like to use at least to some extent.
So what does 'profitable' mean?
If Climate Change gets really problematic quickly, then guess what, all Nuclear Plants become considerably more profitable because the government will socialize the losses in case of catastrophic failure meaning owners don't pay for massive insurance costs which are a problem for profitability today give the possibility of $100B payouts in the case of failure.
I'm wary of the commentator's cynicism. If we can make demo plants operating at some scale, close to break even in 25 years ... then that's a strong hint there's material progress, and that those plants could be breaking even another 25 years later.
It also easily justifies a number of scientists working on it now even if only pans out in 50 years. The long term surpluses are potentially ginormous, like, to the point where they existentially shape the future, much like carbon fuels triggered the industrial revolution.
Yeah maybe leave out "profitable," it's too fuzzy and hard to verify. One of the bettors simply expressed skepticism that there would be "fusion as part of the electricity grid," period, so just leave it at that. At least, that's what I would want if I were betting.
(I do think it's entirely possible that fusion will be solidly profitable, especially with carbon pricing.)
