Comment by lukan
2 months ago
No you don't. Commercial use means it makes economical sense. When you have to spend more on maintainance (and recycling/dumping contaminated wall material amd somehow get the fuel) then you never can hope to make any profit.
A running ITER with positive energy output for 20 minutes just proofs that the concept can actually work. From there to commercial use would still be a long way, if it ever can compete at all, except in niches, like deep space.
(I rather would bet on the Stelleratar design)
I'm not saying ITER would be a commercial machine, I'm saying the Tokamak design would be viable.
Stellarators are interesting, but have been studied much less in comparison.