Comment by myrmidon

I think this is hopelessly optimistic. From what I can tell, they have not even started building the ARC reactor. There is about zero reason to believe that all the completely unproven concepts, like the molten-salt liquid blanket (or tritium breeding in general) are gonna work without a hitch and zero delays-- thats just straight up self-delusional.

In comparison with ITER, the have the advantage of newer magnet technology (which certainly helps!), but thats the only actually proven thing, and every other aspect of ARC is basically complete vaporware.

It would be a very pleasant surprise to have them extract electrical energy from the thing in early 2030, but I'm not even holding my breath for first plasma by then. But we'll see.